Wild for Wilder

Young Chang

Lisa Clayton gets to break what theater people call “the fourth wall”

while playing the role of Sabina for UC Irvine’s production of Thornton

Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth.”

Not only does she get to talk to the audience directly in this

Pulitzer Prize-winning play, she gets to step out of Sabina and into the

role of a 1940s actor playing Sabina -- a twist not unexpected in

Wilder’s atypical writing style (witness “Our Town”).

“So it’s like you’re playing two characters,” the undergraduate

student said. “I’m playing a character from the 1940s, who’s playing a

character in a 1940s play . . . It’s kind of difficult, but it’s a very

fun job because the play is very interesting stylistically.”

Wilder’s work was labeled “experimental” when it first hit stages in

the ‘40s. The play became a Broadway hit.

“There are all sorts of tricks and avant-garde techniques,” said Keith

Fowler, who is directing the all-undergraduate production. “Everything

that Wilder does is very clever and symbolic.”

The tricks and turns are bountiful not just in the acting necessary to

bring alive Wilder’s work, but in the story.

“Skin” takes a New Jersey family and places them in the Ice Age, in a

time preceding biblical floods and in the aftermath of a 20th century

war.

“The family doesn’t get older, but it’s about how they, as

representatives of the human species, manage to survive by the skin of

their teeth,” Fowler said.

With so many time jumps, 28 actors play a total of about 60 roles.

“The idea of a family represented over thousands of years -- this kind

of fabulous approach to storytelling wasn’t very popular in the mid-20th

century,” the director added.

Clayton’s character Sabina is the ever-present other woman. In the

first act, she’s the maid who gets pinched by her master -- the head of

the Antrobus family.

In act two, Sabina is the winner of the Miss Atlantic Beauty Contest

-- an honor given to her by Mr. Antrobus. The father, in this act, is the

head of the Order of Mammals. The setting is a Convention of Mammals in

Atlantic City.

In the last act, Sabina is a survivor of a yet unnamed world war.

She’s dressed in tattered camp clothes. She visits the Antrobus home to

see who’s survived.

“It’s a challenge to tie all those [characters] together,” Clayton

said. “To play one character in one setting and then to play her in a

different setting.”

The UCI drama major added that despite “Skin” being a period piece,

the themes are universal.

“That’s what really draws me to it most,” she said. “It relates to

things that are going on in our country today and issues we have

politically and spiritually and everything else.”

Fowler said Wilder was experimental in his stagecraft, but

conservative in his message.

“His theme is extremely conservative,” he said. “Middle class

Americana is his ideal. Small time mid-city life is always to be

preferred to big city life.”

FYI

WHAT: “The Skin of Our Teeth”

WHEN: 2 and 8 p.m. today and June 8; 8 p.m. Wednesday through June 8

WHERE: UC Irvine’s Little Theatre. The campus is at the intersection

of University and Campus drives

COST: $11

CALL: (949) 824-2787