Issues of the times intertwine in 'Stoning Mary'

Sarah Rebell Staff Writer

There are three things you should know about the new Philaletheis play “Stoning Mary”: It has no distinctive characters; it is intentionally being performed in classroom rather than a theater; and director Rachel Lee ’08 will take it as a bad sign if the audience leaves feeling entertained.

Up-and-coming British playwright Debbie Tucker Green wrote “Stoning Mary” to examine of the current political debate about industrialized countries’ relationship with Africa. “The play is about a number of situations that we associate with Africa, but it is set in the country where the play is performed [in this case, the United States] in order to get us to reconsider how we think about those situations and how we respond to them,” said Lee, the executive director of Philaletheis.

The play addresses issues such as AIDS, child soldiers, death by stoning, genocide and poverty. After every show, Lee will host talkbacks to engage the audience in conversation about these subjects and how they are considered in an American context. “We’re all part of [the play’s] problems; we all affect each other and suffer in a similar way,” said stage manager Sarah Muenzinger ’10.

Considering the material, Lee and the cast prepared extensively for the themes of the play and their roles. “We probably spent one-twentieth of our time getting up on our feet,” said Jillian Shaw ’09, who plays the corrections officer who guards Mary. “We spent most of the time discussing and researching...so that when it was time to play with the text, we couldn’t wait to unleash our ideas.”

The characters are not intended to represent actual people; instead, they symbolize human experiences and human nature in three interlocking stories. A husband and wife who both have AIDS can only afford one prescription. A child soldier returns home to his parents, who had been devasted by his disappearance. Mary, the title character, prepares to be stoned to death for committing an act of vigilante justice and begs her sister to attend her execution.

According to Lee, they are “universalized characters, and their stories all intertwine with each other and add up to one picture.”

Other symbolic characters are the egos that accompany the characters who have HIV/AIDS. “The egos are the mind half of a mind/body split that kicks in with the disease,” said Lee. “These egos have the strength that their physical bodies do not.”

Vanessa Kritzer ’08 plays two of the egos. “[‘Stoning Mary’] is a lot about people wanting to express more than they have the ability to do,” she said.

To convey this, the actors use expressive and behavioral gestures. “But it’s very well grounded,” said Kritzer. “We don’t want to leave the audience behind, but we also don’t want to be holding their hands.”

The cast and crew consider the play an opportunity for members of the Vassar community to think about themselves, their country and how people interact on a global scale.

“As we started to explore the play, we found a lot of connections to situations in our own country,” said Lee. “For example, we looked at the prison system in the United States and found that oftentimes the prison system here is filled with more abuses than the prison system in other countries such as Uganda.”

“This play,” said Kritzer, “shows students trying to understand the same subjects we negotiate in class, but through performance art.”