also in this section Koster to read from his new novel

A comedy noir original

by Eric Jackson

Except for a jazz night and an International School of Panama play in June, Catherine Hopkins's new play "Land of Opportunity" closes out a financially and artistically successful 2000-2001 season for the Theatre Guild of Ancon, Panama's English language theater. The show will be playing on May 11, 12, 18 and 19, and if you haven't seen it you should.

In this scene Penny (Stevie Bodden, Balboa Academy) shows some professional hospitality to Samson (Patrick Casal, International School of Panama). Stevie may have looked all of her 18 years, but Patrick's acting and appearance wouldn't give you much of a clue that he's 15. Photo courtesy of Theatre Guild of Ancon

This is a dark comedy set in Las Vegas, as writer/producer/director Catherine Hopkins puts it, "a highbrow comedy about lowbrow subjects." We find a luckless and suicidal Samson (Patrick Casal) and a scheming but gullible Laurel (Melodie Faulkner) parked in dead-end jobs and a cheap motel in search of a break. Penny (Stevie Bodden) is a confused but well meaning "hospitality girl" with a strange penchant for going through other people's wallets. Day (Daniel Amores) is a veteran hustler with evangelical and statistical pretensions. There isn't a character in the cast who isn't seriously dysfunctional.

On the other hand, the cast functions, together and individually, quite well. High school students Bodden and Casal are good examples of the young talent that the venerable Theatre Guild has been attracting and developing over the past. Faulkner, a young Texan who studied drama in college and recently arrived here to live with her Panamanian husband, and Amores, a theater critic, musician, screenwriter and filmmaker in his own right, are good examples of the adult talent that keeps English-language theater alive on the isthmus. Amores is a lot more than that ——— he's brilliant in this play. It's well worth it to come to the theater just to hear him preach the gospel of greed.

This is Catherine Hopkins's second original play for the Theatre Guild. Up in Texas her first, "Done For," was a finalist in the Southwest Festival of New Plays competition and may yet grace a stage in the United States. Original theater doesn't draw such large audiences as better-known works by the likes of Neil Simon, so the Theatre Guild has arrived at a balance by which it stages a couple of well known and well loved classics every year, to generate the income needed to allow them to stage some lesser known, often original, theatrical works.

You'd have to call it a hustler's summit, were they not so low down. Laurel (Melodie Faulkner) and Day (Daniel Amores) plot to cheat Samson and maybe the casino. Laurel's the naïve one with pathetic aspirations, and Day's the slick one with pompous affectations. Photo courtesy of the Theatre Guild of Ancon

Of course, to stage an original play means an appointment with Panama's Board of Censors, who charge the producer $30 for the privilege. The censors come out to a rehearsal to look for skimpy dress, profanity or lewdness. Maybe in the states Penny would have been more scantily clad, but here the sexual themes were played down and the censors didn't whip out their blue pencils. "Like something by Fellini," was how Hopkins described the experience with the censors. At least they didn't require the Guild to translate the play into Spanish.

Especially because a couple of the actors are so young, Hopkins says that there were entire rehearsals that were dedicated to talking about characters. "Laurel and Samson had to be young to be credible," she noted, but that entailed teaching a high school kid about such maladies as compulsive gambling and suicidal urges. Penny also had to be young, and Hopkins cast Stevie Bodden in that role largely because her own real world personality didn't seem like too much of a stretch from her character's. The "act naturally" aspect of her performance matured over two months of practice. "You would never have known how good she could be," Hopkins remarked after the opening night performance, in which Bodden was in fact quite good.

The star of this cast is clearly Daniel Amores, who's every bit as much the creative person as Hopkins. It didn't lead to ego conflicts. "I didn't know much about him when I cast him," the director said, "but he was wonderful to direct." Besides his stage debut with the Theatre Guild of Ancon, Amores is also busy producing his screenplay "Sex and Zen."

Panama's juega vivo put Hopkins in the right state of mind to write "Land of Opportunity." "I couldn't have written this in Dallas, Texas," she admitted. Also important to this particular creative process was her run-in several years ago with Engelbert Humperdinck's entourage. The singer's driver in particular taught her the odds and strategies of craps, and the whole crowd in general demonstrated the calculating mindset found among the Vegas wiseguys. Leave it to Hopkins and Amores to turn it into a religion.

I'm not sure I want to baptize anyone into the faith, but I would encourage everyone to catch a good original play. Go see "Land of Opportunity."

Dark comedy: Samson gets suicidal, but Laurel's more concerned with counting her money. Just how dark one takes this scene to be depends in large part on the viewer's life experiences. Photo courtesy of Theatre Guild of Ancon

 

also in this section Koster to read from his new novel
©2001 The Panama News