The World Premiere of ‘The Cancellation of Lauren Fein’ Portrays the New American Tragedy

 

Must meritocracy be sacrificed at the altar of Diversity-Equity-Inclusion initiatives (DEI) and what is the cost to society when it becomes cancel culture?  That is at the heart of this gripping and disturbing World Premiere of Christopher Demos-Brown’s The Cancellation of Lauren Fein at Palm Beach Dramaworks.  His play pays homage to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible which, although about the Salem Witch trials, is an allegory steeped in McCarthyism and the hysteria over communism.  As Mark Twain remarked, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”  Higher education’s commitment to DEI is giving rise to a kind of vigilante justice with unintended consequences.  It is the next rhyming verse in history, and the playwright and PBD’s production powerfully capture the repercussions. 

 

A liberal university’s “Anonymous Reporting System” (and therefore no accountability, a kind of Orwellian big brother watching you) along with vociferous DEI proponents, aided and abetted by the ubiquity of social media, take aim at a lesbian couple, both college professors, Lauren Fein and her wife, Paola Moreno, impacting not only their lives, but that of Dylan, their 16-year-old African American foster son.  Like a stone thrown in a pond, the ripple effects wash far beyond this one story.  Much of Demos-Brown’s play is a moving suspense-filled court-room style drama in Academia, with Kafkaesque twists and turns, building to a startling conclusion and a highly effective double ending with a truly tragic twist of the knife, the imagined alternative reality in a world of truth and scientific reasoning.  It is unforgettable.

 

The play is an invective of modern academic woke life.  Nothing escapes the playwright’s scathing eye, as his drama examines a liberal university’s killing of the goose and, along with it, the golden egg of truth and academic freedom.  Universities’ core values of intellectual inquiry and research seem to be taking a back seat to values that work against their very mission.  The play is exciting, suspenseful, painful, making you want to shake your fist at good intentions gone unhinged.

 

Demos-Brown pushes the play to the borders of metadrama.  Paola’s academic specialty is the playwright’s spiritual mentor, Arthur Miller, and her colleague, Evan’s, is David Mamet.  The latter playwright wrote Oleanna to which this play finds some commonality, although Mamet’s play was for an earlier time focusing “merely” on sexual harassment.  DEI moves well beyond yesterday’s critical-race-theory outrage and its roots in Title IX.  One only has to consider the recent crisis at Harvard University which morphed into questions concerning the prevalence of anti-Semitism.

 

Yet, the playwright lands his punches with great pathos and humor, the cost to the Fein- Moreno household being just the microcosm to that of society and academic life.  His play is so contemporary, it actually anticipated developments as it was being written even the innuendo of there being positive values to being a slave, shades of Florida’s Governor’s pronouncement.   It is an example of life imitating art, and it is written meticulously to capture the way people really speak and react to one another in love and under unimaginable stress.

 

Niki Fridh plays Professor Lauren Fein the brilliant, indefatigable genetic biologist, on a fast track for the Nobel Prize.  Yet, she is the good academic soldier, agreeing to teach a basic biology course (laughingly nicknamed “Holes and Poles”).  Fridh nails her character’s breezy open manner and her brilliance, neither of which count for much as the cancel-culture hammer comes down on her.  She captures both the tragic side of her fallen character, a victim of her own hubris, and yet delivers lots of the humor in the play, but with a contemptuousness so fitting the nightmare that evolves.  As the play is a tragedy, the seeds are sown in her personality, with off ramps from the crisis readily available, but knowing that she is not guilty she refuses to avail herself of those reputation-saving alternatives.   

 

Diana Garle and Niki Fridh Photo by Alicia Donelan

Diana Garle is Paola Moreno, Lauren’s wife, a professor of theatre and film studies who freely admits that her status as Fein’s wife and being queer and Latina didn’t hurt her future for advancement in their liberal university.  It is a co-leading role, a key one as she breaks the fourth wall, keeping the audience apprised of the back-story. Garle slips in and out of being a truth teller to the audience and a character in the play with ease.  She has the most impactful role in the play, a bravura performance by an actor who is new to Palm Beach Dramaworks.  Paola lives with the consequences of Lauren’s tragedy and Garle’s collapsing resignation at the end is heartbreaking.

 

Malcolm Callender (PBD debut) is very effective as Dylan Fein-Moreno, the troubled 16 year old foster child confused by the world, his place in it, and such is easily manipulated by the nightmarish circumstances.

 

Odera Adimorah and Malcolm Callender Photo by Alicia Donelan

Odera Adimorah (PBD debut) is the kindly Professor Chikezie Nweze “Chi”, Lauren’s Nigerian research partner with a comforting basso profundo voice.  In a way he’s also a soul father to Dylan, trying to help him make sense of the world.  His unease about homosexuality is overshadowed by his dedication to Lauren as he is convinced that her research on sickle-cell anemia will save untold lives in Africa.

 

Lindsey Corey plays the prosecuting attorney, Melanie Jones, with a fervency befitting her nickname “’Melanin’ Jones” who Paola describes as “the DEI movement’s Che Guevara.”  Being a “loser” is not in her character’s DNA and Corey goes on a fresh attack with every push back.  She is also Lauren’s academic adversary as Jones’ field is Gender Studies for which Lauren has contempt as being a phony made-up major, one which siphons off needed funds for her research, a field which can actually publish papers “about how penises cause climate change.” 

 

Karen Stephens, a veteran of many PBD plays Dean of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Marilyn Whitney, heretofore a friend of Lauren’s.  Stephens projects her character’s pain at having to move from friendship to becoming almost a “tag team” with Jones.  She knows that her new and rarified position of being appointed Dean depends on her appearing to disapprove of Fein’s actions and explanations (“as a woman of color, I’m really under the microscope here”).  Lauren feels betrayed by her once-upon-a-time friend.

 

Lindsey Corey, Diana Garle, Niki Fridh, Barbara Sloan and Karen Stephens Photo by Alicia Donelan

Barbara Sloan makes a mighty effort to stay impartial as Judge Lorraine Miller, and keep order at one point saying “we are academics with PhD’s” (amusingly implying that should ensure decorum in the proceedings).  She marks her territory to Lauren’s defender’s question about her law experience with the acerbic reply “I’d prefer ‘Judge Miller’ in these proceedings.  And, yes – I have a law degree from Duke.”  She also delivers one of the more profound truths attached to the proceedings, the “rules of civil law do not apply here.”  Precisely the problem!

 

Stephen Trovillion plays the voice of reason in the role of Professor “Buddy” McGovern, which I suspect is a stand in for the views of the playwright, who also is a practicing attorney.  He is the only straight white male in the play, and amusingly is a progressive from the old south, complete with a southern drawl which adds to the abundant humor of the play.  Trovillion projects his character’s bewilderment of the proceeding’s disregard for the rules of law to the point that Judge Miller nearly removes him from the kangaroo court.   

 

PBD veteran actor Bruce Linser is perfect as Evan Reynolds, a white, gay film / theatre scholar who has probably been passed over for tenure because of those facts.  He is best friends with Paola and knows the dangers to Lauren saying to Paola “I stopped teaching a long time ago. I just lecture now directly from my pre-vetted notes. But I know Lauren has standards.”  His feelings of betrayal by Paola are palpable.  He is also the ominous voice of Judge Howard in a real court at the play’s sad, disturbing conclusion

 

Kaelyn Ambert-Gonzalez (PBD debut), plays Zoe, a PhD graduate student who once studied under Lauren, had an affair with her, and enacts an incident as a drunk at a party, the final nail in the case against Lauren Fein.

 

Margaret M. Ledford directs this world premiere production with pace and crispness.  She elevates the verbal sparring of the proceedings, even when they are overlapping.  The director and the Palm Beach Dramaworks team have transported the play to a level of hyperrealism with the video design seamlessly integrated into the performance.  Clearly, she commands the respect of the actors and flawlessly choreographs the action as intended by the playwright, with the help of Nicole Perry (PBD debut), the intimacy choreographer for a number of such scenes.

 

Scenic design is by Anne Mundell who has created an area supporting the other technical designers.  The worn pragmatic benches and tables serve a multiplicity of purposes and could be the setting for Salem in 1692 or appropriately a stage for a modern day Greek chorus.

 

Video design is by Adam J. Thompson.  The visual projection enhances the architecture of the set, identifying different locations and creates a canvas for the brilliant montage of social media at work.  There we can sense the voyeurism of people stepping into private space.  The play is cinematic and so are the visuals.

 

Costume design is by Brian O’Keefe, for real time, extended time, flash backs of each character with his/her own color pallets.  They range from pant suits worn by the professionals, with Dean Whitney’s costume design having military connotations and Buddy McGovern amusingly dressed in attire resembling something Tom Wolfe would wear as the style of a Southern gentlemen.

 

Lighting design is by Kirk Bookman who in Act I has multiple lighting challenges for many different locations whereas Act II is mostly the courtroom with full lights up.  At the denouement there is a ghostly white spot on Lauren and a life like spot on Paola.  It is highly effective and moving

 

Sound design is by Roger Arnold with an emphasis on transitions between spaces.

 

What Paulo says about “Uncivil Rights,” a student’s play she advocated can be said about this play: “In my writing classes, I teach my students: ‘Dazzle, delight, and derange. Find the sacred cow and kill it.’ This kid...located the most tender spot in American political culture and probed it with merciless beauty. The play was everything art should be: Poetic. Painful. Hilarious.”

 

But the future is encapsulated by Buddy McGovern’s impassioned concluding argument: “Is this truly the goal of your so-called revolution? A post-modern world with ad hoc rules at every turn? A world where innuendo kills reputations and rumor ends careers? A world devoid of any semblance of due process? Where subjective slight trumps objective truth? Is that what you really want?”

 

The Cancellation of Lauren Fein is sure to enter the canon of important contemporary drama and it can be seen here, first, at Palm Beach Dramaworks. 

 

Covid Blues

 

I was hoping my next entry would be about the joys and details of the 2024 Jazz Cruise.  Until….

 

Up until this point, Ann and I had avoided coming down with Covid.  Mostly everyone we know has had the virus in spite of, like us, having the full arsenal of seven shots.  Feeling invincible, we boldly resumed our normal social lives, wearing no masks, although we were about to go on the one cruise we treasure above all, The Jazz Cruise. We went to the theater several times before departure and Ann participated in not one but two Mah Jongg tournaments.  It was inevitable I suppose but the timing couldn’t have been worse, Ann coming down with Covid exactly one week before our departure. 

 

We had a devil of a time getting Paxlovid which was unavailable at the nearest two drug stores and then getting a voucher (for Medicare recipients) from Pfizer to cover the new $1,300 price tag on the prescription.  So within two days she was on medication but still it was a bad bout, the worst being three days of an extremely painful sore throat.  Yet, naively we still waited to pull the trigger on canceling the cruise, hoping, hoping, but two days before departure we had to throw in the towel.  Another experience lost to this pandemic, although luckily, never feeling her life was in danger.

 

Our first Jazz Cruise was right before Covid hit in 2020.  One wasn’t even planned for 2021 as we were all in the nadir of the pandemic. We booked the 2022 cruise as it looked feasible with certain precautions, but then the CDC suddenly advised against cruises because of a new Covid surge at the time. We patiently, no anxiously, awaited 2023 and by then it was considered safe and we had the time of our lives.

So we were looking forward to this year’s festivities until Covid came to visit.  Not living in NYC any longer, and now being only an infrequent visitor, the Jazz Cruise is our only opportunity to see some of our favorite jazz performers live.  My other entries in the links above mention the names of some of the jazz artists we closely follow.  Most are on the present cruise, with the exception of Bill Charlap (he will be on the 2025 Cruise which we have already booked).

 

Still another experience missed, three years out of five, not a very good grade, 40%.  At our age, how many more opportunities?  Besides not seeing family, Covid also canceled our 50^th wedding anniversary, one we expected to celebrate, possibly, in the presence of the great man himself, Stephen Sondheim.

 

Being marooned at home again, gave me more time for my own piano.  Bill Mays, a great jazz pianist who I met a few months ago when I was playing for a Christmas party (talk about being outside one’s comfort zone, playing with one of the greats listening), was nice enough to send me some lead sheets of his music and one by Johnny Mandel who he worked with and we mutually admire although he recently passed.  I thought I had most of Mandel’s music but I did not have the one he sent, “The Shining Sea,” such a plaintive, Mandel signature song.  I love it and will eventually try to record it.

 

Mays’ own “Gemma’s Eyes” is challenging for me, both rhythmically and harmonically and I’ve been practicing it.  I like challenges such as that as it helps one keep moving forward.

 

He also sent me Quincy Jones’ “Pawnbroker,” again a song I had never heard before, the theme from the film of the same title, which more easily fits into in my playing style and is a haunting melody.  From our brief encounter, Mays certainly put his finger on what I would respond to and I’m grateful to him, especially this week as I feel cut loose in a space we had reserved for non-stop jazz. 

 

This leads me another musical observation, a very unlikely one for me.  I just “discovered” Taylor Swift.  I’m not sure what led me to her other than having this void of a week of great music lost.   Whenever I’ve seen her it’s been in the context of her world tour concert, with music blasting, back up bands, strobe lights pulsating, hoards of screaming fans, and, well, essentially the way popular music is presented now, everything geared to overwhelm the senses (“deadening” might be a better word).  Maybe that’s what we need in this chaotic world but I’ve always avoided that scene.  But I’ve also seen her briefly televised at Kansas City football games, cheering on her man, the outstanding tight end, Travis Kelce.  Except for her exclusive seats in the owner’s suite, she seems like just another football fan.

 

As I never really heard her sing, I tried to find her in a more intimate setting without all the over the top fireworks of her concerts and I came across Taylor Swift’s NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert.  It is 28 minutes of her performing four of her well-known (well, not to me) songs "The Man", "Lover", "Death by a Thousand Cuts" and "All Too Well" at the Tiny Desk, indeed an intimate setting where it’s just her and the guitar or piano and a handful, maybe a hundred, standing, adoring fans.  It was so enjoyable to hear her singing solo. 

 

 

It's as if Paul Simon was reincarnated more than 50 plus years after I first heard him.  There are eerie comparisons.   I can see the attraction of today's youth to what she has to say.  (I first heard Paul Simon -- who lived in my neighborhood --in 1957 when he performed “Hey Schoolgirl” with his partner Art Garfunkel. They were then known as “Tom and Jerry,” that recording making it to the national charts at the time.)

 

Swift is a cross over country and folk, a little rock and a lot of pop.  Yet every generation has its troubadour (or in this case a “trobairitz” -- in my generation there were Carole King and Joan Baez).  My generation also had Bob Dylan as our troubadour, singing his songs of despair and political activism.  But most of all, Paul Simon is more relevant to Swift’s music, with his songs of lost love, sadness, nostalgia and of course, loss in general (“hello darkness my old friend”  “and we walked off to look for America”).  When I was going through my divorce in the 1960s, his songs spoke directly to me the way Taylor Swift’s speak to her generation now magnified by social media.

 

Just listen to her sing “All Too Well.” I was touched by her ability to evoke a certain kind of emotion like Paul Simon did with a guitar (or in this NPR concert, her playing the chords on the piano as she sang).  It’s a song about autumn and lost love, a sense of the same emotion in Simon’s “Leaves That Are Green” (albeit, different rhythm, styles, one contemporary and the other vintage 1960’s).

  

In “All Too Well” she writes about a boy who was her love.  She sings:

 

Autumn leaves falling down like pieces into place

And I can picture it after all these days

And I know it's long gone and that magic's not here no more

And I might be okay but I'm not fine at all

 

Some of the lyrics from Simon’s “Leaves That Are Green” could be that boy answering:

 

Once my heart was filled with the love of a girl

I held her close, but she faded in the night

Like a poem I meant to write

And the leaves that are green turn to brown

And they wither with the wind

And they crumble in your hand

 

She's the real deal and this intimate NPR setting helped me to fully understand her popularity.   Maybe in these Covid infested times I’ll become a Swifty!  I certainly respect her values, encouraging her generation to vote.  So many of those in their 20s and even 30s haven’t the slightest interest in voting, not caring (or even being conscious of) that my generation is handing off a world where the existential threats are far greater than when I was of that generation.  Shame on my generation, but shame on them to eschew the only possible route to change.  Maybe she will continue to be a force to set that right.

 

So we beat on.

 

An Ovation for the 2024 Perlberg Festival of New Plays at Palm Beach Dramaworks

 

 

It was nearly ten years ago that Palm Beach Dramaworks’ Producing Artistic Director, Bill Hayes, implemented their visionary Dramaworkshop, dedicated to providing resources and support for playwrights to develop scripts.  The logic was if not-for-profit theatres don’t do it, who will?  Broadway no longer takes such chances.  It was a bold move as regional theatres typically suffer under some economic adversity and Dramaworks had just settled into their new theatre on Clematis Street in West Palm Beach.

 

Then came Covid, yet another strong headwind.  Fortunately, PBD had the financial reserves to wait out the storm, and has come back stronger than ever and, with an endowment gift from Diane and Mark Perlberg, their commitment to new plays has been secured for years to come.  The Dramaworkshop is under direction of PBD’s Bruce Linser, a gifted actor and director, and his enthusiasm for the program is infectious.  He and his committee sift through hundreds of submissions each year, winnow them down to five, workshop them, and those become dramatic readings as part of the renamed Perlberg Festival of New Plays.

 

It is hoped that one or two of the plays presented in the festival will make it to the main stage to join the classic plays presented each season.  Last month’s production of the highly acclaimed The Messenger by Jenny Connell Davis emerged from last year’s festival.  2024’s festival just successfully concluded and because of the Perlbergs’ gift the five new plays were also prefaced by interviews with two theatre luminaries, actor Estelle Parsons and playwright Mark St. Germain.  

Parsons appeared at PBD in My Old Lady (2014) and has originated numerous roles in new plays over her decades-long career.  PBD helped develop St. Germain’s script for Freud’s Last Session and produced its Southeastern premiere (2011).  A feature film based on the play, starring Anthony Hopkins, was recently released.

 

Parsons was interviewed by Bill Hayes on Jan 3, a great kick off to the festival.  They are not only theatre colleagues, but are now old friends and it was amusing to watch how Parsons, a veteran of six decades in the theatre, now 96 years old but feisty, sharp, and a take charge kind of person, just go her way with the interview, while Hayes was left holding his interview outline (although he did manage to hit his high points).  It was a friendly, even loving, give and take.  Parsons is also a director and when asked the question of what is the main role of the director, it was “to find the truth.”  Hopefully the video that was being taken of the interview will be made available in the future.  It was a “don’t miss” beginning to the festival and Parsons attended each and every performance in the ensuing days.

 

The following day Hayes interviewed Mark St. Germain.  Again, both have a long association.  This time, Hayes was on script and like his plays, St. Germain was thoughtful and passionate about ideas.  Many of his plays are a form of historical fiction and focus on single characters, or small casts.  They are intimate and cerebral.  He talked to an extent about bringing his material to film but with some regret because of the loss of control.  It was a memorable interview and St. Germain was also in attendance for all the new plays that followed.

 

So the first two days were these landmark interviews, then five new plays in three days (brief descriptions provided by PBD):

 

PROXIMITY

by Harrison David Rivers 

Newly divorced and sheltering at home with her two children at the height of the pandemic, Ezra hasn't been touched by another adult in eight months. At a virtual PTA meeting, she is introduced to the charismatic Irie, another single parent, and their immediate attraction causes Ezra to reconsider the limits of her Covid bubble.

 

STOCKADE

by Andrew Rosendorf  

Five years after the end of WWII, a group of gay soldiers gathers for a reunion on Fire Island. They are met by an outsider with a surprise that will cause them to question whether history is best left in the past. At a time when “security risk” is government code for “homosexual,” it will take courage for them to step out of the shadows and confront their present and future.

 

COLOR BLIND

by Oren Safdie   

In 2009, a jury was tasked with selecting an architect to design the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. This play is a fictionalized account of how that panel of diverse people and ideas may have come together – or been pulled apart – in making its decision, and in so doing, challenges the audience to consider the state of our current civil discord.

 

EVERYTHING BEAUTIFUL HAPPENS AT NIGHT

by Ted Malawer  

Ezra is a successful children’s book writer. Nancy is his longtime editor. They are always on the same page, until someone new threatens to disrupt their friendship and influence Ezra’s next book. Set in 1980s Manhattan, this play explores the legacy of an artist, the meaning of intimacy, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.

 

LITTLE ROW BOAT

by Kirsten Greenidge  

When 14-year-old Sally Hemings travels to Paris as nursemaid to her half-sister’s young daughter, the world appears to have opened much wider than Thomas Jefferson’s post-revolutionary Virginia plantation on which she was born. It is not until Sally’s brother James, also in France as he trains to be a chef de cuisine, points out the peculiarities of their circumstances that Sally begins to question the kindnesses their “master” has extended to them.

 

These are rehearsed presentations by professional actors, most Actors Equity members.  Although they have a podium for their scripts, there is no scenery, special lighting, movement, all the elements endemic to theatre.  Yet, the actors are emotive and draw the audience into the production; we, in our imagination, supply the rest.  While we are watching the playwrights’ work, they are watching the audience as these readings provide valuable clues as to what further developmental work might be needed, clarity, cutting, or maybe more humor, or laughter at the wrong spot?  After the play, there is a Q&A skillfully managed by Linser, encouraging the audience to give their true reactions. 

 

No doubt one of these, at least, will appear on a fully developed main stage production in the future.  I would hate to be on the “jury” to make those decisions as all have merit and as their descriptions indicate a special relevancy to our present times.  The arts are not a competition and to make such decisions more difficult is the fact that a reading is threadbare of staging.

 

Each of the plays presented touched me in some way but I’ll mention a few; and these are very personal observations, unique to my own theatre experiences and background.  So no intended judgment of the ones I fail to mention.

 

Color Blind reminded me in some ways of Tracey Letts’ The Minutes.  Although the latter is about a bickering City Council meeting turning into something very ugly about the town secret, Oren Safdie’s Color Blind uses a similar technique, projecting architectural designs as kind of Rorschach test for bringing out societal issues and the personalities of the jury.

 

Because I have a background in publishing, the relationship between editor and author as portrayed in Everything Beautiful Happens at Night rang true, playwright Ted Malawer exploring larger themes of loneliness, shame, and love.  That reading had two of South Florida’s premier actors, Tom Wahl and Laura Turnbull, which helped make it especially touching.

 

Although entitled “Little” Row Boat, it made a big impression on me because it was so challenging, with lots of symbolism and dramatic contrivances that could be highly effective in a fully realized stage production.  In a narrow sense the story is about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, but the macrocosm is about slavery leaving an indelible imprint on our nation.  I can imagine if Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia was workshopped, there would have been similar difficulties (in my mind, Kirsten Greenidge’s Little Row Boat has a similar feeling and complexity).  It is certainly theatre to think about.

 

After the festival there was a Champagne toast to all who made the festival possible.  The collective energy that goes into staging this festival is monumental by very talented people.  Hopefully, it’s success represents an emphatic statement that theatre is back!  And maybe some mighty oaks will grow from these readings.