The Producing Unit brings in Sarah Ruhl’s polyamorous play
HOW TO TRANSCEND A HAPPY MARRIAGE
When: 8 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays
Where: Center Stage Theater, Paseo Nuevo (upstairs)
Cost: $29/$18
Last September, The Producer’s Unit, headed by producer/director
Peter Frisch, held a staged reading of a recent Sarah Ruhl play at
Center Stage Theater. It was a way to test the waters–and wait to
get the rights to a performance–for “How to Transcend a Happy
Marriage.” Ruhl’s play interrogates the heart of motherhood,
marriage, sexuality, desire, and more, and maybe we aren’t ready for
that. Lead actor Ivy Vahanian, last seen in “Spoon River Anthology”,
certainly wasn’t ready either. (Don’t worry, the play opens tonight
through February 3.)
“I was really dissatisfied,” she admits. “It was like showing a film
when you haven’t finished shooting. I didn’t want to see anyone. I
wasn’t sure I wanted to do it.”
She goes on to explain that a staged reading is a kind of rehearsal,
and the kind of emotions that this play tackles are pretty raw. But
here was an unfinished rawness, shown to the audience. Even entering
rehearsals this time she was wary.
“Then I told myself to quit being a baby about it,” she says. “And
pull myself up by my bootstraps.”
What happened in between then and now was a changed cast. Brian
Harwell, Jenna Scanlon, and Bill Egan had joined. Shay Munroe, Matt
Chung, Blake Benlan, and Roz Borah were there too. It’s a powerhouse
of actors. And then things clicked.
“I feel it’s so much about myself as a mother and what you give up
being a parent in relationship to your autonomy and sexuality,” she
adds.
Vahanian plays George, one half of a New Jersey couple who attend a
new year’s party for their other married friends. Intrigued by a
younger shared acquaintance’s freewheeling, polyamorous lifestyle,
the four invite over Pip (Munroe), who hunts her own food and has two
live-in boyfriends who also turn up. Hash brownies get shared, and
the final topping isn’t vanilla sex–rather it’s, er, Neapolitan. And
that’s the first half. The second half involves Georgie and Pip going
hunting together in a section that is magical realist compared to the
first half’s realism.
Vahanian is digging working with Harwell and Scanlan because she’s
long been a fan of John Blondell and Lit Moon’s work; but the play
also gives her a chance to work with 20-somethings (Pip and her
boyfriends) as well as San Marcos High actor Roz Borah.
“She’s unique and self possessed and only 15 years old,” she beams.
“This is her first professional show…and the things she has to say…”
She drifts off into giggles. “There’s a reason the poster warns of
‘Adult Themes of Sexual Nature'”
But this is not titilation. The play, while funny, gets darker as it
gets on, though it has a ‘happy’ ending of sorts.
“You will relate to this on a different level if you’ve had kids,”
Vahanian says. “But as cheesy as it sounds, at it’s core it’s all
about love. Not sexual love necessarily. But love in the ways that
make us the most human.”
