It’s been a summer of expansion for FAU’s Theatre Lab, in anticipation for a bustling fall and winter theater season beginning next week.
The company, founded by pioneering actor-turned-director Lou Tyrrell, opened its inaugural 2015-2016 season with a series of well-attended and critically acclaimed staged readings of new plays and musicals in FAU’s Parliament Hall. Tyrrell spent his summer vacation fundraising and rebuilding the small space into a larger proscenium that will accommodate full productions—thanks to a $100,000 capital investment by the Heckscher Foundation for Children that has been matched by the community. And Tyrrell is ecstatic about showing South Florida theatergoers the results of the extensive remodel, starting Oct. 21 with the Theatre Lab’s world-premiere production of “The Three Sisters of Weehawken.”
“It has been really a magical experience,” Tyrrell says, stepping away from an educational workshop this week in the new space. “The utter thrill of having a hundred middle school students looking back at you from the stage after a summer of renovation really says it all. It just is so gratifying to know that you can start with a yogurt shop and in a very short time have a new theater dedicated to new work in American theatre. It’s just so thrilling.”
The play kicking off the company’s reboot, “The Three Sisters of Weehawken,” is the latest collaboration between Tyrrell and playwright Deborah Zoe Laufer. Tyrrell gave Laufer her first big break with his production of her play “The Last Schwartz” at Florida Stage in 2003, and went on to produce her “The Gulf of Westchester” and “End Days.”
Looking back toward the bleak comedies of Samuel Beckett as well as Chekhov’s similarly titled “Three Sisters,” Laufer’s “Three Sisters of Weehawken” follows 60 years in the lives of the title characters, a trio of New Jersey siblings with aspirations to visit Manhattan—a seemingly simple journey they never seem to pull off.
“I wanted to write a play about aging, and about what it means to have lived a life, and about being stuck,” she says. “We talk so much in this country about following your dream, this is a play about, what if you don’t? What if you just live your life?”
“Three Sisters,” which stars an all-star cast of Betsy Durkin, Elizabeth Dimon, Niki Fridh and Jessica Farr, marks the first time Laufer will be directing her own work—a daunting responsibility considering the play’s many challenges. “It’s a particularly difficult play in that it’s incredible prop-heavy,” she says. “We have to build some bizarre props; the technical challenges have been the hardest thing.”
But as far as the actors, who age six decades over the course of this dark comedy, no wigs or makeup will assist in the transition. “It’s all done with acting,” Laufer says. “Absolutely nothing changes about them, except their physicality. That’s part of the thrill of that—It might be my most theatrical play. It’s hopefully extremely funny, and moving as well—I cry at very rehearsal.”
The show closes on Nov. 6, and the season continues with Steven Dietz’s “This Random World” (Dec. 2-18), a comedy about serendipity and misconnections; and Allison Gregory’s “Motherland” (Jan. 27-Feb. 12), a modern-day spin on Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children,” about a self-made food-truck proprietor raising her kids in a harsh 21st century environment.
“I would say that while I didn’t approach the selection of the plays with a common theme, each one of the plays, in their own way, offers a storyline that fits into the central idea of what it is to be human,” Tyrrell says. “I think a common aspiration was that we would be bringing to life three important new works.”
Speaking of new works, Theatre Lab has not stopped producing staged readings of recent plays. On Oct. 26, in collaboration with FAU’s Center for Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Tyrrell will direct the regional premiere reading of “Avocado,” the latest solo show from feminist provocateur Eve Ensler. Putting a face on the abstract statistics of human trafficking, it’s told from the perspective of a victim as she’s being shipped to her destination alongside crates of rotting produce. Leah Sessa, a musical-theater dynamo, will star in what will arguably be her most dramatic performance yet.
“She’s a powerful young actor, and you need someone to lend their virtuosity to the piece,” Tyrrell says. “There’s a quality about her that is very distinct and unique as an artist, but she also can convey an everywoman quality that lends to the power of the piece. She’ll bring it to life with all the dramatic force it calls for.”
“The Three Sisters of Weehawken” runs Oct. 21-Nov. 6 at FAU, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton. Tickets cost $35. Call 561/297-6124 or visit fauevents.com. Tickets for “Avocado,” which include cocktails, dinner and a discussion, cost $50 for general seating and $75 for reserved seating. Call 561/297-3865 or visit fau.edu/womensstudies.
