Dallas Children’s Theater – Scene Study
Dallas Children’s Theater’s festival of plays aimed at teens gives us something to talk about.
by Cathy O’Neal – Republished from TheatreJones.com
Important stuff is happening at Dallas Children’s Theater almost the entire month of February. Founder and executive artistic director Robyn Flatt has taken four plays with issues for teens and showcased them among audience talkbacks, panel discussions and presentations by experts in eating disorders, learning differences, date rape, abusive relationships, violence and bullying for DCT and the Baker Idea Institute’s first Teen Scene Festival.
All of the plays, performed in the Rosewood Center’s intimate Studio Theater, were written by DCT’s playwright in residence, Linda Daugherty, with an assist by Mary Rohde Scudday for hard 2 spel dad. The issues sound serious, and they are, but each issue provides the framework for doing what theater is supposed to do: Telling a story with relatable characters, realistic surroundings and situations, and even a sprinkling of humor.
After a week of cancellations at DCT, forced by bad weather and then a burst water pipe, hard 2 spel dad got the Teen Scene Festival off to its start only one day late on Saturday. Directed by Robyn Flatt, hard 2 spel dad tells the story of Pamela and Zak, two teens who find common ground with a shared learning difference, dyslexia.
As the story begins, Pamela and her mother are moving in with Pop-Pop, Pamela’s grandfather who has Alzheimer’s, after Pamela’s firefighter dad was killed rescuing people from a burning building. At 13, Pamela and her mom have been coping with her dyslexia for some time, learning ways around her reading challenges. Zac, on the other hand, is repeating eighth grade and has the same difficulties as Pamela, but has not been tested or diagnosed. Instead, he is admonished to try harder by his parents and his teachers.
photo: Linda Blase From left: Kay Fusillier, Kimberly Kottwitz, Larry Randolph and Lisa Schreiner in "hard 2 spel dad"
There are plenty of adults in hard 2 spel dad, but the story is really about Pamela and Zac, played by Kimberly Kottwitz and Skyy Moore, young actors who were both diagnosed with dyslexia while in elementary school. Their familiarity and frustrations of coping with their difference are honest and heartfelt. The best scenes are the ones between the two of them. As Pamela, Kottwitz is the cheerful optimist to Moore’s darker Zac, who deals with his situation by being angry, petulant and out of control.
While Pamela copes and tries to help, Zac struggles, and the adults around him flounder until Zac’s ultimate act of desperation brings everyone together.
The second play in the Teen Scene Festival is the powerful all-youth production dont u luv me? directed by Nancy Schaeffer. Set in high school, dont u luv me? finds giggly, bubbly sophomore Angela falling for CJ, the self-assured hot senior who says and does all the things that make teen girls swoon. At first.
Angela and CJ become the couple everyone else gossips about. The audience watches their relationship progress on stage and through the incessant stream of text messages that appear on the scrim that serves as a backdrop. Angela, played with wide-eyed, heart-wrenching innocence by Lauren Rosen, is giddy with CJ’s attention. He wants to know where she is, who she’s with and what she’s wearing all the time. He calls at all hours to pour his heart out. He demands to see her. Must be love, right?
Things take an ugly little turn at the homecoming dance, and Angela’s world starts the slide down a slippery, terrifying slope to being controlled and abused.
As the self-absorbed, controlling CJ, Montgomery Sutton is frighteningly unpredictable and realistic—sweetly handing out compliments, then turning violent in a heartbeat. Dimly lit behind the scrim, Sutton’s most abusive scenes with Rosen are scary and realistic.
There are no adult characters in dont u luv me?, but the teens in the story know Angela’s and CJ’s relationship isn’t right. Kelly Brooks is sincere as the ignored, then worried, BFF, Jen. Jackson Currie, as Jen’s boyfriend, Sam, is supportive and the direct opposite of CJ. Among Angela’s girl posse, Jourdan Stein (who looks like a young Melissa Gilbert) stands out as Sara.
Both plays are expertly directed. The situations are realistically portrayed and raise questions while also providing answers, not only about what red flags to watch for pertaining to the issues, but also how and where to turn for help. They raise awareness and make you think and discuss. And that is theater at its best.
