Young actors wrestle with touchy subjects

Tom Titus

Comedy and fantasy will take a back seat at the Laguna Playhouse

next weekend when the Youth Theater presents a dramatic exercise

calculated to touch more than a few nerves.

“The Wrestling Season,” Laurie Brooks’ examination of teenagers

and their search for sexual identity, will be presented next weekend

only as a special non-subscription event.

For audiences accustomed to fare such as “The Wizard of Oz,” the

show may jar a few sensibilities.

The play’s main characters, Matt and Luke, two close friends on a

high school wrestling team, are victimized by rumors about their

relationship spread by two of their rival teammates. Their two

choices -- trying to defuse the rumors or ignoring them -- both prove

unfortunate.

“This play has been a challenge,” declared Youth Theater director

Joe Lauderdale. “The issues of negative and damaging rumors and the

search for sexual identity are common obstacles that all teens face.

These issues are common experience for all people and some form.”

For the actors, the experience can be beneficial, Lauderdale

believes, because “they understand the situation and can relate to

it. However, it opens them up to a very vulnerable side of

themselves.”

Brooks’ script was honored with the Distinguished Play Award for

2001 by the American Alliance for Theater and Education. It grew, she

said, out of her work with high school students in the early 1990s

for a Commission on Human Rights.

“In six schools, teams of eight students and I spent time

dialoguing about bias and mistreatment in high school settings, and

explored ways of dramatizing those situations,” Brooks said. “Out of

this work grew scenes that demonstrated situations of prejudice and

unfair treatment.”

These scenes were presented at a countywide conference followed by

drama techniques to extend the performances. The conference was

attended by hundreds of high school students with an interest in

human rights and won a statewide award for excellence in programming.

But, Brooks noted, “It begged to be a play.”

Her problem was compressing all of her work into one script.

“I had to find a center, an arc that would translate what I had

discovered into language and images that would represent the depth of

the experience.”

When a friend invited Brooks to a wrestling match, she realized

she had found that central metaphor, and “The Wrestling Season” was

born.

“The play is told in the form of a wrestling match,” Lauderdale

said. “The dialogue is natural, but the actors’ physicality is more

athletic. There are several wrestling matches, choreographed by Todd

Loweth, in addition to other wrestling-inspired movement.

“The entire cast -- men and women -- wear only wrestling uniforms,

called singlets, which adds to their vulnerability,” Lauderdale

noted.

The playhouse has scheduled discussions between cast and audience

after each performance to discuss issues raised in the play.

“The play speaks volumes,” Lauderdale said, “but offers no answers

because there are no answers except, I suppose, don’t gossip and

don’t judge. And both of those are hard not to do.”

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Coastline Pilot.