Transcending and Transgressing with Iron Crow
Iron Crow Theatre returns to Baltimore Theatre Project weekends from April 11 through April 27 with a rare revival of HOW TO TRANSCEND A HAPPY MARRIAGE, Sarah Ruhl’s 2017 comically thoughtful–or thoughtfully comedic–romp through monogamy, polyamory, relationship geometries of all sorts, and mealtime. While not her most recent work at this point, the play arguably reflects a shifting point, even a transition one might say (in the spirt of the show), in Ruhl’s work to a more mature, midlife mindset–one that explores motherhood, mortality, and metaphysics alongside its sexy partner-swapping and fable-like phantasms.
To make some sense of the play’s provocative mayhem, and to highlight its gentle ruminations on love, community, and self, I was lucky enough to welcome the production’s director–longtime Iron Crow Resident Artist Ann Turiano–for a conversation. Which you can enjoy here if you miss hearing it air on WBJC.
Audio PlayerAs for the play: At a dinner party deep in the wilds of New Jersey, George and her husband talk with a fellow married couple and find themselves captivated by stories of a younger polyamorous woman who hunts her own meat. Intrigued, they invite the mysterious woman and her two live-in boyfriends to a New Year’s Eve party—setting off a chain of events, including an unexpected orgy, that will forever change their lives.
Here and always, playwright Sarah Ruhl seems to write from and about the intersection of the everyday and the fantastical, the prosaic and the poetic, the unspoken and the unspeakable. In this instance, she jumps into a crowded lineage that might include (among others) Pinter’s OLD TIMES, Stoppard’s THE REAL THING, Cowards DESIGN FOR LIVING, Albee’s A DELICATE BALANCE and THE GOAT, or even Wilde’s IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST; not to mention the innovative dramaturgy of Caryl Churchill, Paula Vogel, Naomi Iizuka, and others. Into this mixture Ruhl characteristically tosses some Ovid and a healthy dose of Virginia Woolf, along with her own signature blend of poetic whimsy, sly subversion, and fantastical theatricality.
How To Transcend A Happy Marriage — Iron Crow Theatre
As the playwright herself says, “We all exist in relation to the world, our partners, the human race.” She also shares the observation that, “Ovid, who was a big influence, talks a lot about transformation and people transforming into beasts and back again. So I was really interested in all kinds of transformations.” For this play, that includes (but is not limited to) connections and blurred boundaries between animal and human, food and emotion, primal urges and transcendence, intimacy and community, metaphor and reality.
Plenty more information, time and date details, tickets, and more can be found online at ironcrowtheatre.org or at theatreproject.org
And as always you can enjoy my full conversation with Ann Turiano here:
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