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Hena Choi | Phoenix Staff

Jackie Avitabile and Colin Aarons appear in “Vinegar Tom,” the Senior Company’s feminist rock and roll extravaganza hitting the Frear this weekend.

BY TIFFANY LIAO

In print | Published December 4, 2008

The premiere of "Vinegar Tom,” the Senior Company 2009 production, is sure to elicit a host of reactions from its audience. The one reaction that is sure not to be present? Boredom. After all, the play is what director Jackie Vitale ’09 calls “a feminist rock and roll extravaganza” set in 17th century England during a spate of witch trials.

“Vinegar Tom” captures several weeks in a village that is swept by a national craze of witch-hunting. The play specifically centers on how several of the women in the village are affected by the possibility and the fear of being accused of witchcraft.

The Senior Company chose to perform Caryl Churchill’s 1976 play because of its focus on issues of gender politics, feminism and class prejudice. “We found lots of things about the play like body image and medicalizing women’s bodies which still felt really relevant today,” actor Jackie Avitabile ’09 said. “We were really interested in talking about feminism first of all because nobody talks about it,” Director Jackie Vitale ’09 added, “It’s a taboo subject, like, ‘Oh, we don’t need it. That was the 70s.’”

In an unusual stylistic twist, the drama of the play is interwoven with musical interludes in which modern-day rock star versions of the characters sing to the audience about the scenes in the play. The songs are meant to allow the audience an opportunity to step out of the play and digest the issues presented in the previous scenes. Musical Director and Vocal Coach Dan Perelstein ’09 decided to write the music as “arena rock,” because “the lyrics that are given as part of the script are really in your face. We wanted to match that, instead of trying to fight against it.”

Far from confusing matters, actor Jessie Bear ’09 believes that the music enhances the drama of the play. “It’s a beautiful marriage of music and story and theater, and everything is just so present—live music, man!” Bear said, “The music encourages us as actors and hopefully will encourage the audience to be more energetic about watching the story and to care more about these characters and to think more about the play and what the play is trying to say.”

Although set in 17th century England, the play is informed by and comments on three time periods: the 17th century, the 70s during which Churchill penned the play and modern-day 2008. Keeping a balance between the multiple eras proved to be a unique task for the Senior Company. “There are a lot of layers, but there is so much thematic overlap in all these time periods. The key to unlocking the play is unlocking that overlap,” Bear said. “The 17th century stuff could be a metaphor for today, and then the stuff in modern dress when we’re doing the songs can be a metaphor for the 70s and so on.”

While the Senior Company agreed that the material in the play is inherently relevant over 30 years later, adjustments were made to the play to make it more pertinent to a modern day audience. “The feminist movement in the 70s was incredibly different than it is now, Vitale said, “We approached it from a more modern angle and we brought in our own concerns. We focused on issues of the female body and we downplayed some of the socialist feminist issues that were more relevant in the 70s.”

As it prepared to stage “Vinegar Tom,” the Company found great inspiration in the ideas of influential German playwright Bertolt Brecht. “The idea is that theater is not a place of escape, but a place of change, of social action, where you come to learn and you come to be in dialogue with the performance,” Vitale said. This informed many of the Senior Company’s decisions concerning the production, whether reagrding the acting, the staging or the music. One of the most noticeable incorporations of Brecht is the arrangement of the audience around the stage and the choice to leave the backstage completely visible to the audience. “We put the audience up high looking down and examining these characters as little peons acting out their story,” Set Designer Kim Comer ’09 said. “Yet with the open backstage, audience coming in will be pushed through backstage. It’s very presentational in the sense that we are doing a show.”

“There’s no magic. Everything is laid out for you, we’re not trying to trick anyone with theater,” Musical Director and Vocal Coach Dan Perelstein added. “Here you can see the lights, the props table, the instruments, the band, the wires.”

The intention is that the audience will constantly be cognizant of the fact that they are watching a theater production and will therefore be prompted to process the show and its message.
“We want [the audience] to keep a distance and to continue thinking, instead of only feeling,” Perelstein explained, “You see a couple scenes and you pause as the rock band reflects on it and gives you time to digest it, instead of just getting caught up in it.”

Vitale also drew from Brecht when it came time to develop movements for the characters. This was a challenge because Churchill does not include stage direction in her plays. Vitale and the Company decided to create dynamic physical movements that embody a character or a situation. One notable scene reveals Alice’s conflicting emotions of desire and fear when she is approached to learn the herb trade; a single tense movement she simultaneously lunges forward and recoils.

“There are several moments in the play where the movements become otherworldly, and it’s very presentational, very metaphorical,” Vitale said, “That’s become a big part of the show, creating these moments that say something just through the images.”

Just like the set, the music and the acting, the movement of the play is designed around conveying the messages that Churchill puts forth in “Vinegar Tom.” “We’re really intimately involved in the story, but also in the message and the themes and the questions that the play presents,” Vitale said, “We all hope the audience feels the same way and they’re asking the same sort of questions and thinking, ‘this whole situation is a part of me even though I go to Swarthmore and I’m living in 2008.’”

Bear expressed an even more basic desire for audience reactions. “I just want them to talk—to talk when they leave—about the play and to have that conversation last longer than when they get to the door of LPAC but to have that conversation maybe last to the next night or the next week.”

“Vinegar Tom” will be performed in the Frear Ensemble Theater in the Lang Performing Arts Center (LPAC), with performances on Friday and Saturday, Dec. 5 and 6 at 8 p.m., and on Sunday, Dec. 7 at 2 p.m.

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