Image courtesy of Connecticut College Theater Department Facebook page
Cloud 9, written by Caryl Churchill and directed by Associate Professor of Theater Ken Prestininzi, is the theater department’s second production this semester. It promises to make its mark as one of the strangest and most interesting plays ever performed in Tansill’s black box theater. “I fell in love with this play when I was an undergraduate, and the questions and provocations that are brought up are still unanswered. Caryl Churchill really plucked these strings about where we’re at with understanding and misunderstanding gender and sexuality, and how fluid it is, how unfixed it is,” explained Prestininzi.
The first act, which takes place in an unspecified region of Africa in the midst of 19th-century Victorian colonization, shows both the price one family pays for the promotion of patriarchy and the damage that is done through violence in the name of the empire. Some actors switch characters after intermission, and there are multiple instances of cross-gender casting throughout the show. Questions of sexuality and gender identity are ripped apart and pushed aside to maintain the pristine image of a family with its dominating patriarch, Clive, portrayed by David Socolar ’16 in Act I. Clive keeps his family in check, forcing the role of head of the household onto his son Edward, played by Leise Trueblood ’16 in Act I and Aidan Gorrell ’18 in Act II. Edward wants nothing more than to be left alone with his sister’s doll and the “loving” affection of their visitor, Harry Bagley, portrayed by Ramzi Kaiss ’17.
In Act I, Gorrell plays Betty, Clive’s wife, and struggles to accept that her duty to her family prevails over any duty to herself to be truly happy. Having her own desires shut down by everyone around her, including her mother, Maud, a widow played by Emma Weisberg ’16, Betty is told that it is wrong to want. The family dynamic is interrupted by the arrival of two guests who stir up sexual tensions and confuse the family structure. Neither Harry Bagley nor Mrs. Saunders, Mattie Barber-Bockelman ’16, conform to the expectations imposed on them by time and place. Mrs. Saunders is the only woman in the show brave enough to maintain her right to desire, and Harry’s reputation is threatened with destruction by the same patriarchal dominance that has given Clive the power to cage his wife and son in a prison of expectations.
The empire Clive lives to serve doesn’t stop outside his front door. Clive’s personal servant, an African native to the region played by a white man, hops to attention any time he hears his name, “Joshua!” According to Prestininzi, “National politics infuses everything in the domestic life, and you can’t separate the two. The political shapes the personal and the personal shapes the political.” These truths are evidenced by the dynamics between characters in Cloud 9. Clive has colonized the tribes around him, and his servants, but the empire lives on in the patriarchal family that he heads. He has colonized his children, his wife and the other women in the house. The patriarchy functions as its own kind of empire.
The second act is set in the 1970s. This should be a time difference of 100 years from the first act, but for the characters, it appears that only 25 years have passed. Their family has fallen apart, and when Betty leaves Clive, she can’t accept the opportunity to take care of herself. Edward, his younger sister Victoria, played by Trueblood, and Betty, played by Gorrell, are all given the chance to explore themselves. They search for a new, self-defined purpose in the forceful freedom of navigating life without the presence of Clive’s control. The audience watches Lin, played by Barber-Bockelman, struggle to distance herself and her daughter, Cathy, played by Socolar, from the patriarchal world of the past. But, in doing so, she has imposed self-liberation upon her daughter.
These questions of gender identity, sexuality, love and freedom are set to a soundtrack of classical music, African drums and hits of the 1970s, making some not-so-obvious connections between the Victorian era empire and “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The stage is its own feat, rearranging itself for the second act as completely as the characters rearrange their family.
The patriarchy is not something that we left behind in the Victorian era, and people have been struggling against its legacy long since the 1970s. “In terms of what is going on now, it seems like all these issues have come back but with a different fervor. I wanted to see how this generation engages with Caryl Churchill,” said Prestininzi. Gay marriage, for instance, has only just become legal in the United States; homophobia and transphobia are a major part of everyday American life. Cloud 9 brings to mind all of those issues that form the backbone of a heteronormative society and that persist despite the best efforts of many.
Performances are this weekend at Tansill Theater, on Friday and Saturday night at 7:30, and at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. To celebrate opening night, the LGBTQ Center is co-sponsoring a Dance Your Gender Out party in Hood and Ernst with dancing and food at 10:30 p.m.
