Business as usual for a theater company in summer might mean time off or prepping for the fall season.
For Bricolage Productions and producing artistic director Tami Dixon, there’s nothing usual about the summer of 2017, but then, there’s nothing “usual” about Bricolage, known internationally for its immersive works. Ms. Dixon is taking a month away from the company she runs with her husband Jeffrey Carpenter to return to the role of Miss Julie in “Miss Julie, Clarissa and John,” an adaptation of the Strindberg work by Mark Clayton Southers.
Ms. Dixon and castmates Kevin Brown and Chrystal Bates originated the title roles in the play introduced last year by Mr. Southers’ Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company — housed in the same building as Bricolage, at 937 Liberty Ave., Downtown. A tightened version of the new “Miss Julie, Clarissa and John” will have three performances at Playwrights third-floor venue — 8 p.m. July 27-28 and 5 p.m. July 29 — and then hit the road for a stop at the National Black Theatre Festival in North Carolina Aug. 1-3. The play’s final destintation Aug. 8-26 is the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland
Mr. Southers, director Monteze Freeland and dramaturg Kyle Bostian had been working to trim the play to one act and then tightened it further after input from the actors Monday at their first rehearsal.
“For Scotland, we definitely want a one-act performance, because we feel like it can be far more powerful if there is no break to let loose that tension we work so hard to build,” Ms. Dixon said.
“It was really great as an actor to be part of shaping the show,” she added. “Often as an actress you don’t get that opportunity. But because Mark wrote it for all three of these actors, and because he is such a generous artist, he allowed us to be part of that process.”
Strindberg’s Miss Julie is a willful Swedish aristocrat who seduces an engaged valet on her family estate, and things spiral downhill from there. Mr. Southers’ Miss Julie is the white daughter of a plantation owner in the Reconstruction Era South, where she sets her sights on John, a black servant to her father.
Ms. Dixon has returned to Miss Julie with strong feelings about presenting her as a complicated character, “so it’s not so easy for the audience to say, ‘She’s a monster, who cares about her?’ ” the actress said. “I would rather the audience would struggle to see, yes, she wields her power in negative and aggressive ways, but ultimately she is hurt and damaged and lacking in education and in love, and how that creates a person who can behave so monstrously.”
She understands that the character, transplanted from an all-white Swedish estate in 1888 to the same time in the United States, living on a former slave plantation in Virginia, can be seen simply as a symbol of white privilege while being offensive and hurtful to black audience members.
“When we did it here in Pittsburgh for diverse audiences, some largely African-American, a small percentage of people got offended and took that as their parting shot,” Ms. Dixon recalled. “Most of the audiences expressed empathy and saw the work that Mark and the actors put into this show and really were grappling with their feelings afterward. It wasn’t easy, but most weren’t ready to dismiss it as, ‘Oh she’s evil.’ ”
As the play has moved forward, including a production at St. Louis Black Rep, it has been received as a commentary of a time and place with echoes to today. “I am hopeful it will cause more discourse than suffering and anger,” Ms. Dixon said.
In her 12 years with Bricolage, Ms. Dixon has never taken this kind of time away from company business, but the opportunities to perform Mr. Southers’ work at two prestigious festivals was too much to pass up.
In her absence, Bricolage will continue to work on series such as WordPlay and Midnight Radio while developing its newest large-scale immersive project, co-created with another husband and wife team, writer Gab Cody and director Sam Turich. The collaboration, with Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History, takes visitors to places usually off-limits to the public. It will debut in October, giving Ms. Dixon at least a month to jump back into her Bricolage duties.
“Everybody is granting me the opportunity to do this, and I am grateful and I trust them,” Ms. Dixon said. “When I get back, we will continue the work, together.”
Sharon Eberson: seberson@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1960. Twitter: @SEberson_pg.
First Published: July 19, 2017, 4:00 a.m.
