Once upon a time, a woman has her heart literally ripped out of her chest by a former lover. Determined never to allow this to happen again, the woman buries her heart under an enchanted city. Some time later, the woman, with the aid of her new lover, is desperate to locate her buried heart. How does she find it? By following a trail of "breadcrumbs," of course.
If this sounds like the beginnings of a fairy tale, writer/director Kyle Hall would readily agree with you. Hall, who has adapted Rebecca Brown's book Terrible Girls for About Face Theatre, says Brown's stories function as fairy tales because she takes "simple, everyday things and explodes them, blows them up, into grand proportions." Everyday things like—love, shattered relationships and ... severed body parts. "When I first read Terrible Girls I was going through a painful breakup. That process is so profoundly personal, and for anyone who is not inside it, it is the most mundane, common place, every day occurrence. You just want to say to them, 'Okay, just find a way to get over it!' But when you are inside of it, it is just huge. And that is what Rebecca writes about it. The end of a relationship really IS like having your arm ripped off," explains Hall.
"I have complete trust and a genuine curiosity about what Kyle is going to do [ with The Terrible Girls adaptation ] ," says a clearly excited Rebecca Brown. Brown, who lives in Seattle where she writes occasional theatre reviews for the alternative weekly, The Stranger, was thrilled that Hall tapped into the "physical energy" of her book. That "physical energy" translates onto the stage as a heady mixture of dancing, singing, drumming, martial arts and rope climbing.
"People are not literally dancing around and banging on drums in the book," says Brown. "But I'm glad Kyle got that from the book, because the stories really are about the body ... about the visceral and physical mess people make of love. The extreme physicality of Kyle's adaptation is entirely appropriate for the book."
"Hey look, in my youth, I was a big-time slam dancer," offers Brown with a good-natured laugh, as an example of her devotion to expressing emotions through the body.
"Reading Terrible Girls the first time was like ... rock & roll," muses Hall. "There was something about the clarity of the images and the way that she uses words that puncture you in the way that music does, in the way that drums do. It takes you over. This play, is athletic I think, in the way that rock & roll is athletic."
Hall, along with choreographer Peter Sciscioli, and Andre Pluess and Ben Sussman who scored the music, were directly inspired by event-based performances like Blue Man Group, Stomp and Cirque du Soleil in crafting what will be the world premiere of The Terrible Girls. The demand for such extreme physical prowess and ability made for a particularly difficult casting process, with close to 80 female performers competing for the play's eight roles. "We were looking for a combination of talent that people usually don't train themselves for," says Hall with a sly grin. "Who trains to be a drummer-dancer-actor-with a gymnastic background? And honestly, I was casting the show even before I had a full script because I knew if we found the right eight women we could build this play around them. And we found them and they're fierce!"
A gay male writing and directing a play rooted in the complexities of lesbian love might seem odd to some theater goers, but not to Rebecca Brown. "It would never cross my mind to say 'You're not a woman? Then, you can't adapt it for the stage!' This project would be different no matter who did it, a woman, a person of color, etc. Each person would have a different take on the stories. I could just tell after a few minutes talking to Kyle that he got it, he got what the book was about."
"I'm not necessarily bringing my gay maleness to this project. What I am bringing is what rocks me, and what excites me as a person. I have never done anything that has so crystallized that for me in the way that putting together this show has. It IS what I think is sexy. It IS what I think is smart. It is what makes me both laugh and cry and it is—when I watch the rehearsals and it is working—always what I have wanted to say."
So, does everyone live happily ever-after in this modern day fairy tale—a world populated by fierce lesbians who engage in combative dance and search for missing, still-beating hearts? Hall won't say, of course.
However, based on the unconventional premise of this show, The Terrible Girls is sure to get your adrenaline pumping in ways Cinderella or Snow White never could.
The Terrible Girls runs through May 27. Call the box office at 773-549-3290, www.aboutfacetheatre.com .
Author Roy Richard Grinker