BWW Rhode Island welcomes the four-woman cast of OUT LOUD Theatre's The Yellow Wallpaper to the BroadwayWorld guest blog. The Yellow Wallpaper, directed by Kira Hawkridge, is the second installment in OUT LOUD's fifth season, "That Way Madness Lies." This production presents a fully immersive, four-part experience; each part tells a complete story from beginning to end, but the individual pieces - RITUAL, LIGHT, COLOR, and ESCAPE - provide meditations on Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper as viewed through varying lenses. Erika Rethorn joins BWW RI to explore "Escape" in the fourth and final part of the guest blog series.
Over the past five years I've seen OUT LOUD Theatre grow with each production. Trusting her ensemble to build with her, Kira [Hawkridge, Artistic Director] has encouraged this company to explore the mental through physical storytelling. This piece is a perfect example of this process, having built specifically from the work done in Season 4, our "free" season. We were free to explore themes of justice and truth, challenging ourselves to use our entire bodies. This allowed us to take the beautifully chilling story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, meditate on her themes, and realize there's no one way to do this piece.
It's so hard to speak directly about this piece because we're creating four different worlds that aren't easily defined. Which may be on purpose. I've translated the way I think about our world of The Yellow Wallpaper production to the way I've thought about The Woman's mental illnesses. Though she may be diagnosed by her husband in the story, I've not wanted to diagnose what she deals with. Medicine and society have changed so much in the past hundred years, I want to think of her as a person first, outside of her diagnoses. Similarly, though we have elements from which we can jump off, no one of our four Women is tied to or defined by her piece, i.e. "Light," "Color," etc. It's freeing and terrifying. But once you diagnose an illness, a box is created and expectations are set. With this Woman, many people, and our process, the human mind has boundaries that have a farther reach than those of which we are aware.
---
OUT LOUD Theatre Presents The Yellow Wallpaper: A 4-Part Immersive Experience: RITUAL | LIGHT | COLOR | ESCAPE from June 22 to July 9 at The Mathewson Street Theater, 134 Mathewson Street Providence, RI.
The Yellow Wallpaper is presented as a four-part series:
THURSDAYS - Part 1: Ritual (Featuring Siobhan LaPorte-Cauley)
FRIDAYS - Part 2: Light (Featuring Ottavia De Luca)
SATURDAYS - Part 3: Color (Featuring Sarah Leach)
SUNDAYS - Part 4: Escape (Featuring Erika Rethorn)
For full details and to purchase tickets, please visit www.outloudtheatre.org.
ESCAPE Website Page: http://www.outloudtheatre.org/escape.htmlPhotography by Piquant Photo | Justine M. Johnson.
Videos