The Theatre
Guild of Ancon has been around for half a century and its guard
has been changed many times. There has always been some
continuity, and there is now, but with people coming and going
there are periodic changes in artistic values and seasons in
which new people have to undergo the inevitable trials and
errors of learning how to produce a play.
“My Left
Breast,” the Guild’s first production since the
departure of Catherine Hopkins, is an example of both of these
phenomena. The one-woman show, directed and acted by Billi
Veber, went on before relatively small audiences on November
14, 15, 20 and 21.
It’s
unfortunate that more of Panama’s English-speaking
community didn’t attend, because both Veber’s
performance and the play itself were very good. The Theatre
Guild’s artistic standards are in very good shape.
“My Left
Breast” is an autobiographical monologue by award-winning
playwright Susan Miller, about her bout with breast cancer and
life in general. An adult play, it revolves around a lesbian
single mother’s determination to get on with her life
after various losses and in the face of different
challenges.
This reviewer
is not a big fan of deconstructionism, that theory of cultural
criticism which holds that an audience’s perception of a
work’s meaning is more important than the author’s
intended message. However, these words are written by a guy who
has no problem with lesbians and less hesitancy than most
people to visit prisons --- including for the purpose of
reminding incarcerated lesbians that they are not alone --- but
who has this instinctive dread of hospitals and is usually not
the sort of person to pay a visit to a friend on a cancer ward.
To me, cancer is a dark theme. However, as I learned in an
exchange of emails with the author, that wasn’t how she
meant it.
“I look at
my play,” Miller wrote, “not at all as a dark piece,
but a work infused with humor and connection to other people.
It is above all, very human. The audiences I've encountered
have related to me, or to the character of Susan, as a complete
person, flaws and all. Not as someone "other" but as
someone like themselves.”
Veber agreed.
In a discussion after the second Theatre Guild performance, the
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute scientist noted that
“I’m none of the things she is --- I haven’t had
cancer, I’m not a single mother, I’m not a lesbian,
I’m not Jewish --- but I can identify with this
character.”
Maybe that
helped the artistic cause. Apparently Billi Veber learned to
act by some version of the Stanislavski Method, but she said
that, due to the short preparation time for this play, she
didn’t “go into character” beforehand. Yet there
was nothing awkward or unbelievable about her acting, and from
that one must presume the natural identification with the
character to which she attested.
Veber also
pointed to Miller’s pacing of the play, wherein heavy
moments were offset by humorous and hopeful parts. The overall
effect was anything but that of a funereal dirge.
There are
inferences to draw from a complicated mix of low attendance,
“the gay issue,” public perceptions of the
play’s tenor taken from its title and billing, the Theatre
Guild’s history and a new group learning how to do
publicity. However, no particularly radical conclusions are
justified.
The reality is
that in most of its seasons the Guild has tried to do a mix of
well-known family-oriented plays with more obscure or more
serious works, and the general experience has been that the
newer or more adult-oriented a show, the less attended it has
been.
Against that
business reality one must balance the intellectual needs and
desires of this country’s English-speaking theater people.
Surely on each night that “My Left Breast” played at
the Theatre Guild, elsewhere across Panama much larger
audiences turned on the SAP features of their TV sets and
indulged in English-language Hollywood fare. That’s OK,
but it doesn’t do very much for creative people here. The
Guild serves several purposes, of which providing a forum for
artists to develop their craft is far from the least.
Did homophobia
keep anyone away? Probably. I noticed one particularly bigoted
response to a notice about the play in one of Panama’s
English-language email groups. Were Panama’s Censor Board
to pay attention to the English-language theater, this work may
have run into problems. Around some of Panama’s elite
English-language schools that provide an important part of the
Guild’s traditional audience and also go well out of their
way to avoid exposing the kids to black music someone may also
have looked askance. However, to the extent that such
sentiment is out there in the theater-going crowd, it’s
only on the fringes and by no means cause for the Guild to
limit itself to Ozzie and Harriet fare.
Miller wrote
that in the States such prejudice is mostly a non-issue, such
that “My Left Breast” has drawn good crowds in such
decidedly conservative places as Salt Lake City. “Though
the character is gay, her ‘lifestyle’ is just her
life. It is being a writer, a friend, a mother. I've found that
men, women, younger adults, all see something of their own
lives in My Left Breast. It is about change, transformation,
being a parent, ending a relationship, experiencing friends,
and yes, cancer. But who has not experienced these things, in
one form or another?”
But then
there’s always the odd wimpish producer or yahoo
politician. Though Miller said that she’s sure that the
subject matter of her play has led to business decisions that
have kept it off of some stages, she’ll never really know
to what extent. Then there was Anchorage, Alaska, where a local
theater group lost its city funding for presenting the play
because it had the word “breast” in the title.
“Censorship is a complex phenomenon here in the US,”
Miller said. “It is never official, but, of course, we
know that sponsorship is often dictated by what is perceived as
‘mainstream’ and marketable.”
And what about
the Guild’s transition pains? Notice that many of the old
hands who kept their distance to let the new crew learn by
their own experiences discretely came forward, at the little
wooden theater in Ancon and in cyberspace through their email
lists, to lend a hand at crunch time. The Theatre Guild of
Ancon and its current directors have plenty of friends out
there, and they’ll do fine.
The
Guild’s next production is coming up fast. It will be
"The Magic of Christmas," a continuation of the
troupe’s long tradition of a family-oriented holiday show,
playing one night only, December 13, at 6:30 and 8:30 pm. For
more information, check out the Theatre Guild of Ancon’s
website by clicking on their button near the top of this
page.
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"My Left Breast"
at the Theatre Guild
