Edward Albee's At Home at the Zoo by Edward Albee (review)

Stephanie Lim

Theatre Journal, Volume 70, Number 1, March 2018, pp. 98-101 (Review)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/tj.2018.0012

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/691797

Access provided at 30 Nov 2019 16:48 GMT with no institutional affiliation

98 / Theatre Journal
Jen Olivares, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Lily
Gladstone, and Román Zaragoza in Off the Rails.
(Photo: Jenny Graham.)
emerged from the saloon characters auditioning for
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, which one character notes
offers both economic opportunities and solidifies
Indian stereotypes in the US imaginary. Like Mo-
jada, Reinholz’s play also grapples with economic
colonization, class dynamics, and the seduction of
money as a language of power. Adaptation seems
vital to survival, but will that adaptation require
annihilation and loss? “Kill the Indian and save the
man,” several characters repeat. But there are more
ways than one to enact social death and to sustain
cultural heritage.
Unlike Mojada’s tragic conclusion or Hannah’s
more open-ended ambiguity, this production, di-
rected by OSF artistic director Bill Rauch, conclud-
ed with a largely positive-feeling resolution, with
tweaks to Shakespeare’s more troubling Measure for
Measure ending. Angelo is called out, but not mar-
ried to a savvier Mariana. Momaday and his Irish
love Caitlin will freely love each other and create
new life. Isabel will lead the Indian school and Ma-
dame Overdone retain control of her saloon. These
moments gesture toward a futurity of reconcilia-
tion grounded in forgiveness. At the same time,
that reconciliation favored individual shifts within
dominant structures of power. The school and the
saloon remain, and one is left to wonder with Au-
dre Lourde whether the master’s tools can be used
to dismantle the master’s house.
In the production’s finale, actors clad in tribal re-
galia invited a few audience members to “celebrate
living cultures and traditions” with a participatory
round dance. It felt complicated to witness this
ending with a predominantly white-appearing au-
dience, knowing that other performances had in-
cluded more native presence. I wondered whether
the celebratory theatrical moment I witnessed from
a distance placed the problems of colonization in
the past and resolution in the representational pres-
ent. Was I to be congratulated for attending to this
narrative rather than for working toward ongoing
systemic decolonization? Or did this moment mark
a vital native-authored performative utopia? Could
the theatre be part of a process of decolonization by
inviting Native American artists to tell their stories
through a variety of means? The middle is messy.
In 1996 Wilson famously argued that the funding
of historically white institutions often came at the
expense of smaller-scale, culturally specific theatres
rooted in communities. OSF is consistently work-
ing toward institutional decolonization and cultural
inclusion, even asking whether some productions
might be better served by smaller community-based
theatres. Like the journeys of Odysseus, Medea,
Hannah, and Uni/Son’s Poet, this is not an easy pas-
sage with a clear linear trajectory. The productions
in OSF’s 2017 season, and the institutional labors
that support them, invite essential inquiry into the
mythic depths of our theatrical and cultural origin
stories. As wildfires burned along the western edge
of the continent through Ashland, and OSF contin-
ues to pursue a mission grounded in sustainable
stewardship of all resources toward the health of the
planet, as the company stands with Standing Rock
and supports a network of artistic investigations
outside its realm, the journey continues.
SONJA ARSHAM KUFTINEC
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
EDWARD ALBEE’S AT HOME AT THE
ZOO. By Edward Albee. Directed by Coy
Middlebrook. Deaf West Theatre and The
Wallis, The Wallis Annenberg Center for the
Performing Arts, Beverly Hills, California.
March 24, 2017.
Placing Deaf actors and American Sign Language
(ASL) front and center, Deaf West Theatre and The
Wallis’s co-production of Edward Albee’s At Home
at the Zoo translated Albee’s characters and themes
into an entirely Deaf context and world. In its con-
tinued mission to make theatre accessible to Deaf
communities, Deaf West was the first to interpret
Albee through a Deaf lens, presenting The Zoo Story
in 2007. As in their other works, Deaf and hearing
(“Voice Of”) actors were double-cast to portray
each of Albee’s characters, including three return-
ing cast members from the 2007 production. This
production’s unique inclusion of ASL, coupled with
its scenic design, staging, and costumes, amplified
the play’s themes of miscommunication and the

Jake Eberle (Voice of Peter) and Troy Kotsur (Peter) in Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo.
(Photo: Kevin Parry.)
ambiguous relationship between man and beast, ex-
ploring the imperfect nature of human interactions
in heightened visual and physical ways.
The staging and costumes not only emphasized
the Deaf actors over the hearing actors visually, but
also underscored the play’s zoo-like setting. Upon
entering the theatre, the audience was immedi-
ately met with a 1970s-styled living room, partly
enclosed by a large metal structure resembling a
cage and complete with high black bars and wiring.
The Voices of Peter and Ann remained outside the
cage for the duration of act 1, literally relegated to
the margins as they simultaneously observed and
translated for their Deaf counterparts. During act
2 the Voices of Peter and Jerry occupied similar
positions upstage and opposite to the Deaf actors.
Although Deaf and hearing audiences could access
the dialogue equally, the Voices acted as English
interpreters while the central action of the play oc-
curred in ASL, an inversion of the hearing/Deaf
dichotomy usually found in mainstream theatre
wherein translators are placed off to the sides. Fur-
thermore, while main characters wore colorful blue,
green, and brown clothing, their respective Voices
wore matching outfits in black and gray shades,
which rendered them visually less important. With
the Voices positioned in the margins of the cage
PERFORMANCE REVIEWS / 99
and stage and presented as mere shadows of the
main characters, the feeling of being confined and
watched like zoo animals constantly followed Peter,
Ann, and Jerry throughout the show.
Along with the production’s overt aesthetics,
the physically expressive quality of ASL provided
a visual and physical lens through which audi-
ences could access Jerry’s and Ann’s imaginations,
altogether informing the ambiguous relationship
between man and beast inherent to Albee’s text.
Typically performed as verbal, metaphysical nar-
ratives and entirely without props, Ann’s erotic
fantasies and Jerry’s bestial stories were interpret-
ed here into corporeal, carnal angst through ASL.
During their various stories and monologues Ann
fantasizes about going off into the night, getting
her breasts cut off, and having sex with a stranger,
while Jerry articulates his feelings about his dismal
apartment, eccentric neighbors, and numerous vi-
cious encounters with his landlord’s dog. To fully
portray her risqué tales, Amber Zion (Ann) often
traversed the stage, even suggestively bending over
at one point to reenact an imagined sexual encoun-
ter. Likewise, Tyrone Giordano (Jerry) frequently
raced across the stage, turning an extensive mono-
logue about his landlord’s dog into a visceral nar-
rative encompassing his entire body and the entire
100 / Theatre Journal
Jake Eberle (Voice of Peter), Jeff Alan-Lee (Voice of Jerry), and Tyrone Giordano (Jerry) in Edward Albee’s
At Home at the Zoo. (Photo: Rob Latour.)
environment. Given the vibrancy of ASL—located
not just in the hands, but in facial expressions and
body language—the actors playing Ann and Jerry
translated their stories through their entire bodies,
in marked contrast to productions that portray the
narratives through vocalized speech alone. ASL thus
generated sharp visualizations of Ann’s and Jerry’s
animalistic accounts, which always-already neces-
sitate the audience’s imagination.
The integration of ASL also reinforced the perva-
sive miscommunication among characters and cre-
ated subtle ironies in the play’s references to hearing
and deafness. In Albee’s text the aloof and monoto-
nous Peter is juxtaposed alongside Ann and Jerry,
who are full of adventure, chaos, and excitement.
Although Ann explicitly tells Peter her erotic desires
and urges him to reveal his, Peter often misses her
points entirely, or perhaps refuses to acknowledge
her wishes. Jerry is similarly full of stories that Pe-
ter continually disregards or does not understand.
That characters in this production were Deaf indi-
viduals—and thus primarily use sight and physical
gestures to communicate—resulted in accentuated
interpersonal fractures, such as when Peter liter-
ally could not see what Ann signed or could not
hear her crying because his back was toward her,
or when Jerry resorted to physically bullying Peter
into listening to him and fighting for his territory.
The play’s references to hearing and deafness also
became ironic when combined with ASL: Peter is
concerned that their daughters will hear the inti-
mate conversation from upstairs, even though he
and Ann were signing with each other the entire
time. In another instance Jerry indicated that there
was something in Peter’s voice that revealed his not
wanting or being able to have any more children,
even though Peter does not vocalize at all. Situated
within a Deaf context, ASL heightened the incon-
gruities in Peter’s already-dysfunctional relation-
ships with Ann and Jerry.
After the cast took its bows at the end, the venue
sent audiences off with Rag’n’Bone Man’s “Human,”
a song expressing the imperfect nature of the hu-
man condition—one final nod to Peter’s, Ann’s, and

Jerry’s flawed personalities and disjointed interac-
tions. By grounding Albee’s text in ASL and a Deaf
world, Deaf West further blurred the line between
civilized decorum and the animal instincts inher-
ent to every human being. More importantly, this
production provided a distinct and unique medium
through which Deaf and hearing audiences alike
could access the different emotional, physical, and
visceral registers of Albee’s world.
STEPHANIE LIM
University of California, Irvine
THE OLDEST BOY. By Sarah Ruhl. Directed
by Sarah Rasmussen. Jungle Theater, Min-
neapolis. November 2, 2016.
In The Oldest Boy Buddhist rituals gave sanctu-
ary to both exiled Tibetans and Americans mourn-
ing losses and celebrating new life. Viewing Sarah
Ruhl’s play at the Jungle Theater felt akin to sitting
for meditation, watching the world unfold without
getting caught up in the drama of it, which may
have been both the chanciest and bravest aspects
of Sarah Rasmussen’s staging. Taking her cue from
the poetic sparseness of Ruhl’s script, Rasmussen
gave her production a lot of breathing room. The
unhurried pace and minimal dramatic action risked
boring spectators primed for more typical conflict
and dialogue-rich theatrical fare, while inviting them
to experience a space of sanctuary created through
music, dance, ceremonial ritual, and puppetry.
There is little suspense in Ruhl’s text, which tells
the story of a white Midwestern American woman
married to a Tibetan man (archetypally named
Mother and Father). A Tibetan lama and monk ar-
rive on the couple’s doorstep to announce that their
2-year-old son Tenzin is the reincarnation of the
lama’s teacher. They would like to take the child
to a monastery in India to prepare him to become
the next lama. The question of whether or not the
child is the reincarnated lama is dispensed with
rather quickly. The real conflict is internal: it lies in
Mother’s struggle to let go.
Subtitled “A Play in Three Ceremonies,” The Old-
est Boy tells its tale of love and loss and letting go
through the performance of rituals. Ruhl’s plays
often lament that we lack rituals that teach us how
to love and mourn; these take time and attention,
both in short supply in US society, and take us out
of the comfort of the naturalistically real onstage.
Ceremony 1 depicted a traditional Tibetan wedding.
As Mother and Father finished reenacting their
courtship story in direct address to the audience,
PERFORMANCE REVIEWS / 101
they were suddenly bedecked in headpieces (his
fur, hers a floral wreath) and white silk scarves, and
Tibetan musicians appeared playing the dranyen, a
Tibetan lute (Tsering Dorjee Bawa, playing the vis-
iting monk, as he did at Lincoln Center and Marin
Theatre Company, and Twin Cities–based dancer
Yeshi Samdup). Father and Mother clapped along,
and the musicians turned to the audience and nod-
ded. The mood had been meditative and put the
audience in a quiet observing mode, which made
it seem jarring to be called on to participate (yet
rude not to).
The other ceremonies returned the audience to
that meditative mode. The second was a water bowl
offering in memory of Father’s mother, who died
in Tibet. As in Ruhl’s Eurydice, where the audience
silently watches the father build a room of string
for his daughter, bearing witness to a labor of love,
we beheld Father and Mother fill seven bowls with
water and light candles and lamps, while the monks
and lama chanted prayers onstage. The third cer-
emony, the enthronement of Oldest Boy as lama,
was preceded by a traditional deer dance, Shacham,
performed by Samdup, wearing a stag’s-head mask,
to ritually cleanse the space of evil spirits and ready
it for the lama’s installation.
The first act, set in Mother and Father’s living
room, let viewers peer into the intimacy of the family
home to watch the tug of war over Tenzin. When the
action moves to India in act 2, the stage becomes an
open pavilion. On a practical level, this clears space
for the performance of the acrobatic deer dance; it
also sets Mother and Father adrift in the gaping
Yeshi Samdup (deer dancer), Christina Baldwin
(Mother), and Randy Reyes (Father) in The Oldest
Boy. (Photo: Dan Norman.)