Olivia Shine and Tevion Lanier/Photo: Cleo Shine
RECOMMENDED
If you were involved in the dramatic arts in high school, you probably don’t remember the performances as being the best part of your experience. Then again, perhaps the young people of the Senn High School collective The Yard won’t either. In the third and final production of their first season, the invisible feeling of communal self-discovery is as present as the very visible quality of the production itself.
Lauren Gunderson’s two-person play completely embraces adolescent reality and stars Senn Arts seniors Olivia Shine and Tevion Lanier. Poignantly staged by Dana Murphy, whose movement background informs the play’s most exquisitely expressive moments, “I & You” thrives on the lived-in experience of its leads.
Throughout the play, Shine and Lanier are actively processing their adolescence. Theater penetrates the core of their existence and there becomes a foundation for the more immediate concerns of their teen years. Surely, they are more than these characters, just as all people are more than the characters with which they identify. Yet there is a rare kind of transmutation here, a delicate actualizing that is all the more heartbreaking for being a distant memory for most of us.
The existence of The Yard is an acknowledgement that the absence of positive models for teens on stage is a problem not unlike the lack of racial and sexual representation in theater. And they are not alone in their mission. Co-artistic directors Joel Ewing and Mechelle Moe have selected their associate theater companies carefully. In Jackalope they find an ideal mix of their earlier collaborations with sensationalist The Hypocrites (“The 4th Graders Present…”) and the more even-tempered Raven Theatre (“Milk Like Sugar”). Beyond the mature performances they bring out, The Yard offers a sense of camaraderie and mentorship that is lovingly etched into every moment on stage.
The morals of “I & You” are timeless and vital. In the contrast between the poetry of Walt Whitman and Gunderson’s natural, elegant dialogue, we find the timeless pursuit of authenticity. The play posits that we are more than the stuff we are into but affirms that the stuff is nevertheless integral to the way we live.
An ode to art both new and old, “I & You” is the perfect distillation of The Yard’s inspiring inaugural season. (Kevin Greene)
The Yard in artistic alliance with Jackalope Theatre, 1106 West Thorndale, jackalopetheatre.org, $10-$15. Through March 6.
Related Stories
Sowing and Reaping: A Review of Blood at the Root at The Yard and Jackalope Theatre RECOMMENDED Dominique Morisseau's "Blood at the Root" is the most socially complex work The Yard (in their second collaboration with Jackalope Theatre) has yet to do. And that's saying something for a company that has tackled suicide, pregnancy, death, illness, polygamy and genocide as well as religious, racial and sexual intolerance all through the lens of adolescence and young adulthood. A…- This Is "us": A Review of columbinus at The Yard and Steppenwolf Theatre Company In collaboration with Steppenwolf Theatre Company, The Yard returns with their most ambitious and urgent project to date.
- Supper with Satan: A Review of The Snare at Jackalope Theatre Company As a genre, horror is allegory at its most populist. From “Carrie” and “Repulsion” to “Teeth” and “The Following” it would seem that there is little more anxiety-provoking for the American subconscious than adolescent bodies, specifically female adolescent bodies. While the eighth-grade daughter of an affable Midwestern couple—and ultimate source of woe in Samantha Beach's "The Snare"—who announces that she…
- The Fuckening: A Review of The Light Fantastic at Jackalope Theatre Like the best of the horror genre, the newest play from Ike Holter, in its world premiere at Jackalope Theatre, is equal part scares and scathing social commentary.
- A Foreseeable Future: A Review of In the Canyon at Jackalope Theatre The world premiere of Calamity West's generation-spanning epic at Jackalope Theatre is a definitive example of the bold work the company is best known for.
- The Median and The Mean: A Review of Life On Paper at Jackalope Theatre “Ideation” meets “It’s a Wonderful Life” in this world premiere from Kenneth Lin.
