|
|
Photo by Danna Segrest, courtesy ofThe Purple Rose Theatre Company.
|
|
The cast of "Growing Pretty" includes former PRTC apprentice Stacie Hadgikosti (left to right), Michael Brian Ogden, Matt Gwynn and Matthew David.
|
|
The Purple Rose Theatre Company's latest production stands out in a number of ways.
"Growing Pretty," a "story about a girl who hatches," as playwright Carey Crim puts it, brings a lot of newcomers to the table and some familiar faces to new roles.
Crim was last seen on the PRTC stage in Annie Martin's "Completing Dahlia" in the titular role and as Ginger in Lanford Wilson's "Book of Days."
Friday's gala premiere will mark her first foray into the role of playwright.
Stacie Hadgikosti, playing the lead role of Lucy; Michael Brian Ogden, playing Lucy's close friend Hami; and chorus member Matthew Gwynn are all making their PRTC debuts.
Michelle Mountain adds to her growing list of directing PRTC productions.
While this is Crim's first full-fledged Purple Rose script, she has been doing quite a lot of growing since moving from Michigan and Chelsea's beloved theater to the streets and stages of New York City, where many would-be world conquerors go to see if they have the right stuff.
She is a founding member of Writeclub NYC, through which Crim forged her writing in workshop and showcase productions.
She was also a member of The Second City Detroit Touring Company for two years. Crim has acted in productions at the Meadow Brook Theatre and Jewish Ensemble Theater.
Since going to New York in 2003, she has written short plays featured in 10-minute productions at Manhattan festivals.
Much like the character of Lucy, Crim has grown and evolved over the years, and won some life-changing coin tosses along the way.
Journey of a lifetime
The tale of Lucy Keen, a girl who is desperately seeking to be seen, starts in 1980 and spans her life from ages 12 to 30.
In order to accomplish this feat, she decides to become a supermodel, although circumstances change and with them her goals.
"(The play is) about the growth of a woman, but also an artist," Crim explained.
Lucy's quest changes in the wake of her mother (Rhiannon Ragland) stealing her childhood crush, a photographer named Jack (Grant Krause), who earns her affections by being one of the few people to acknowledge her.
With his discarded camera, she decides to change course and master the art of seeing the world in a unique way through a photographer's lens.
Lucy is a product of her environment and circumstances beyond her control.
"She was supposed to be a twin and her twin brother died in utero," said Mountain.
"Her mother is in mourning for the child that never was, so she has never been able to truly appreciate the child the child that she has. So Lucy grows up feeling invisible and kind of sets out to become visible.
"She thinks at the age of 12 that the best way to do that is to become a supermodel, but she's not quite the supermodel type.
"So when Jack, a photographer who is renting the spare room in her basement, enters her life, she's kind of set on this other course, which is of the artist and the photographer - the person behind the camera."
Over the course of the story, Lucy learns that the best way to be seen is to actually see herself with her own clear eyes, Crim said. Her relationships evolve and conflicts erupt over time, as they tend to do in life.
"She and Jack end up embarking on an affair once she is an adult," Crim said."In the beginning Jack has a crush on Lucy's mother. Lucy's mother is beautiful and everything that Lucy thinks she's not. So Lucy and Jack's relationship as a child is that he introduces her to photography and he does it in a very magical way.
"When she looks at the paper developing in the chemicals she thinks it's magic because there's nothing there and then there is. And he gives her her first camera right before he leaves town."
The relationship between Lucy and her mother is a key one, because Lucy is cut off emotionally and not much of a mother-daughter bond exists. Lucy's father (Hugh Macquire) is a lost workaholic treading in between his family.
"You find out (over the course of the play) that there were many multiple losses," Crim said, adding that audiences might be shocked to find out what secrets some of her characters will unfurl as Lucy crosses the threshold of becoming her own woman.
"There is a moment in this play where things go too far," Mountain said. "Jack crosses a line that he can't uncross, so Lucy ends up alone but stronger for it. And she becomes an artist in her own right.
"Everybody who hasn't had a charmed life comes to a point at which (they) understand that the things that have happened, (they) have done or have been done to them that were awful or seemingly negative, can be viewed from the other side as blessings, because they make you who you are."
Fiction in practice
"Growing Pretty" isn't autobiographical, although Crim admits that some of her life experiences and a few funny little situations are peppered throughout the play.
"It does take place at the same time that my childhood took place in, so there are either moments in history that I remember very clearly and there are moments in my life that sparked ideas for certain scenes," Crim said.
"The stuff about the relationships with the mother or father or Jack aren't (autobiographical), but I had a best friend who was picked on in a very similar way that the Hami character is picked on.
"There's a funeral scene with a character that was very similar to someone who approached me at my own mother's funeral."
Crim says Lucy shares an insecurity of hers when it comes to exhibiting her work.
"There's this moment where Lucy is showing Jack her work and she is really nervous about what he is going to say, so she starts over-explaining every detail of it."
Crim did the same thing when reading the first draft of her script to her husband.
"I was literally over his shoulder saying, 'Well that's not going to be there, and that's going to be cut and that just a stupid scene' and finally he said, 'Carrie, should I just not read it?' while laughing.
"If I can make him laugh, I know I'm on the right track."
The part of the play concerning Lucy's "vanishing twin" was also inspired one of Crim's actual friends.
"I have met other people who have gone through that same thing, including people who are working in this production," she said.
Crim also draws parallels to her character's transition into becoming an artist and her own. It was also no coincidence that Lucy became a photographer.
"I take horrible pictures, so I was fascinated by the research aspect of it," she said. "I liked that idea too, of someone who had that eye."
Such shades of reality are "seeds to grow the story," she says.
The result is a story that is essentially about "being a woman, a human and an artist," Mountain said.
"It's all three of those things. Men have been responding to it as well, and I don't think they need explanations to get it," she added said, addressing the appeal to male audiences of a play that has a very feminine title and sensibility to it.
"I think everybody fears being seen, which means being known," Mountain said. "We go through life hiding from everyone and everything in case no one will like us or whatever, but the real question is 'get to know me.'
"I think that applies to boys and men as well. They respond differently, they ask for it in a different way, but I think it is the human condition to want to be seen and seen as a human being."
Crim sums it up by saying that it's about being "pretty" on the inside.
"It's that glow that happens when you not just understand who you are, but accept it and are willing to put it out there, and I think that's what Lucy learns to do, for better or for worse."
Who Lucy is gets summed up by significant moments in her life that seem bigger than others and some that are merely daily occurrences, but stamp her and make her who she is.
"It's like my 10th-grade English teacher," Mountain said. "She said I should audition for this play and that was it. I remember her name, the day she did it, everything. This play is full of those kinds of things. Some hurt, some would seem like nothing to somebody else, but if they're yours, you remember them."
The play that almost wasn't
Crim started writing "Growing Pretty" three years ago and director Mountain read the script a year later.
The reaction was favorable and PRTC Artistic Director Guy Sanville agreed to work on it too.
Crim had always been a writer in addition to being a stage actor, although she hadn't combined the talents until recently.
"My writing was never play writing," Crim explained. "I started writing monologues for auditions, because I wanted to try a monologue that they hadn't seen a million times."
She received all kinds of feedback on the monologues. People would ask who wrote them or where they came from, according to Crim. One of those bits of advice would be critical to her career path.
"On one job that I used one of those monologues, I didn't get the job but the director called me," Crim said.
"He was calling me to tell me that he couldn't find the play that I had made up.
"I made up a name and a playwright who the monologues were by because someone told me if you write your own, they'll think you can't act."
She used the name of a girl with whom she went to summer camp as a child, and buckled under the weight of her own honesty when pressed by the casting caller.
"Being a really bad liar, I 'fessed up immediately and told him the whole story, and he suggested that I continue that and pursue it," Crim said.
"So I wrote a couple of short 10-minute plays that were produced in a festival in New York and then I started working on 'Growing Pretty.'"
She wonders if her summer camp friend will be getting any calls trying to track her down for the monologues, if she hasn't already.
Crim ended up founding Writeclub NYC and the group produced a workshop production of her script for her benefit and so Sanville could see it in action.
She is cognizant of "Growing Pretty" fell into place through a series of coincidences.
"I didn't even know that they would be interested in producing the script," Crim said.
"I sort of wrote it with (the Purple Rose) stage in mind only because this was my favorite place to work as an actor and I love the intimacy of the space."
She is pleased how the pieces fell into place, and particularly that Mountain is directing.
For her part, Mountain is also pleased to be involved.
"Carey and I met here 10 years ago (during a production. We were both in the cast and it was both our first show here, so that's where we met and we were sort of instant friends," Mountain recalled. "And through the course of years we just stayed friends. She said I needed to read her script, so I read it and was stunned at how good it."
Mountain and Crim have joked that "Growing Pretty" was a girl's play "because it is about a young woman, but also the stage manager, the assistant stage manager, Carey and I all are women," Mountain said.
"That said, the cast is more men than women."
Everyone involved in the production has connected on an entirely different level, according to Mountain, who described the apprentices and crew as "eager" and "excited."
"The women couldn't wait to get started and meet Carey, because they really clued in to what's going on," Mountain said.
"There's been this extra glue binding us together and the actors have been fearless. That's expected here, but still its fun when they're giddy about it."
Mountain said that she would have done anything to be involved with the show.
"I read it and I said 'We have to do this play, and you have to let me do something,'" she said. "Seriously, I obviously couldn't play Lucy and I'm too old for the mom. I said, 'I'll design costumes if I have to!' That would have been a disaster. And Guy came up with the idea, mostly based on our relationship, that I direct it."
Both recognize the chemistry.
"I think this is the perfect project, because we get each other so well," Crim said.
"When she read it she kind of already knew. There wasn't a whole lot of explaining on either side."
Expanded
Web
Coverage
TOP JOBS
