The Cherry is back with the hybrid What Happens if I Don’t through December 12
AND WHAT HAPPENS IF I DON’T
Cherry Artspace and online
102 Cherry St., Ithaca
December 3-12, $25-$35 in person, $20 livestream
www.thecherry.org
The pandemic lockdown might have shuttered venues around the country, but it also offered theater lovers the opportunity to see innovative online productions from companies that are out of one’s geographic range. Since April 2020, I have enjoyed works from Baltimore Center Stage, San Francisco Playhouse, DC’s Studio Theatre and Woolly Mammoth, Steppenwolf in Chicago, Hartford Stage in Connecticut, Boston Court Pasadena and Barrington Stage in Massachusetts, and Chichester Festival Theatre and the Bristol Old Vic in England, among others, all while sitting at my computer.
One of the little gems has been Ithaca’s nonprofit Cherry Artists’ Collective, which has presented Felt Sad, Posted a Frog (and other streams of global quarantine), which interwove six stories dealing with isolation, A Day, a hybrid green-screened show that cleverly revealed its process between scenes, and the two-character onstage Hotel Good Luck, which looked at time, space, and loss in surprising ways.
The company’s latest work is its first indoor show in front of an audience since the coronavirus crisis closed everything down. Berlin-based Serbian playwright and screenwriter Iva Brdar’s And What Happens if I Don’t is being performed in the theater and streaming live through December 12 from the Cherry Artspace. I saw one of the streams, filmed with multiple cameras (including one overhead); the play begins with the small audience entering the intimate space, sitting on chairs and risers on three sides of the room, and ends with the crowd leaving, adding to the overall live experience for those at home. The sixty-minute narrative features eight actresses — Adara Alston, Barbara Geary, Naandi Jamison, Elizah Knight, RJ Lavine, Elizabeth Mozer, Jen Schilansky, and Amoreena Wade — portraying thirteen girls and women who, as they grow older, from birth to seventy-eight, share stories about life lessons, both good and bad, they learned from their mothers; each scene also involves a threatening male figure, from a father and a traffic officer to a creepy man at a public pool and a Customs agent.
What Happens if I Don’t explores outdated gender roles in a series of monologues
In “On Ears, age 0,” the only thing a father can say to his newborn daughter (Jamison) is that she has nice ears, which warps her view of the rest of her body. In “On Concrete, age 18,” a teenager (Alston) is told by her mother to avoid sitting on concrete or else she will become a “sterile, hysterical, unfulfilled woman.” In “On Toilet Seats, age 29,” a woman’s (Wade) mother insists she not sit directly on toilet seats unless she wants to get a disease. Other words of advice relate to urinating` in pools, people with dimples, eating fruit, and plucking out gray hairs.
Each scene starts with the character, dressed in modern-day casual clothing, attempting to jump rope held by two of the other actors, a constant reminder of the joys and fun associated with childhood that go away as one ages and discovers more about the not-so-carefree world. Each character is also joined at one point by three angels who remind her that she is “polite, kind, and very well behaved,” understanding what is expected of her as a girl and a woman. Places to sit (a chair, a small bench, a large wooden farm spool) are moved around to sharp sound effects for every vignette, under eighteen lightbulbs in lampshades hanging from the ceiling at different heights. (The sound and music is by Lesley Greene, with lighting by Chris Brusberg, costumes by Iris Estelle and Sasha Oliveau, and livestream design by Greg Levins and Karen Rodriguez.)
Director Susannah Berryman (Holy Ghosts, Daisy Pulls It Off) gives the cast an ample amount of freedom, resulting in a loose, natural feel despite the serious turns; it’s a show by women, about women, but the male need for power and control hovers over all of it as Brdar (Geraniums Can Survive Anything, Rule of Thumb) explores sexism, misogyny, and old-fashioned gender roles. And What Happens if I Don’t also asks the question “Is mother always right?” (The answer is decidedly no.) The show consists of a series of monologues, but the eight cast members stand together throughout, supporting one another as they battle systemic stereotypes that are still all too real in 2021.