Feature: EXPOSED at The Black Box Performing Arts Center

"Christmas in LA is a dank, terrifying time," says Beth Henley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, half-jokingly when speaking about her little-known play "Exposed," which was staged at the Black Box Performing Arts Center in Englewood this past month.

The gem was given to artistic director and Black Box PAC founder Matt Okin for the theater's "Save the Stages" initiative in the wake of the pandemic which caused theaters to suffer while they were shuttered indefinitely. In the last six months, the theater, which stages top-tier entertainment by a highly-talented group of actors, has performed many notable plays by big screenwriters such as Eric Bogosian's "1+1," Taxi Driver and Raging Bull writer Paul Schrader's "The Cleopatra Club," and Craig Lucas' "Ode to Joy."

Henley attended the Black Box PAC's May 22 performance of "Exposed," which was followed by a Q&A session with Lucas, who interviewed her on the intimate stage. Lucas was nominated for a Tony Award for a Lincoln Center production of his book turned musical "The Light in the Piazza," the world premiere for which he directed at Seattle's Intiman Theater. Henley received the Pulitzer Prize for her 1979 play "Crimes of the Heart," which was made into a movie in 1986 starring Diane Keaton and Sissy Spacek.

"It's not surprising to me that the people in all your plays- which is what I suppose I always responded to-are carrying received trauma upon them," said Lucas to Henley. "The plays are profoundly nervous-making."

"Exposed" takes place in late 1990s Los Angeles right before Christmas-the Winter Solstice-where days of sunlight are abbreviated and pitch-dark nights elongated. The happiest time of the year to the rest of the world is the antithesis for five characters who, despite differing in life experiences, are interconnected by their shared sentiment: loneliness.

The play opens with Jane, played by Danielle MacMath, who is seen knitting, but is herself hanging on by a thread. Beneath her fake smiles she's dying inside as she is reluctant to admit her marriage to her "bear-bear" Mike (Mike Gardiner) interestingly enough, a tabloid journalist, is quickly unraveling, though they seem like the perfect couple to the outside world.

"It's like there's an illusion that somehow if we have enough food, and family and a home and a job and a roof over our head, somehow we'll be at peace," mused Lucas. "But your characters are carrying the unease for their keeping it alive. They wouldn't know how to get rid of it to keep a rabid dog off of them."

In actuality, Mike is secretly having an affair with fellow journalist, sexpot Pye (Katie North). Meanwhile, while waiting for Mike one evening at a bar, Jane meets Reb (Ilana Schimmel), a young woman who dresses and talks like a boy with Southern California stoner drawl who grew up in foster care with Billy, a black boy whom she regards as her brother to his dismay. Billy (Kentrell Loftin) perceives Reb as a pathological liar and a freak who he wants nothing to do with, especially after he stole his car that was eventually towed. A brief scuffle with a police officer landed to his arrest and a stint in jail.

While Reb is the only one who is an actual criminal, the characters are all guilty of their own crimes. When Reb meets Jane serendipitously at the bar, the two mingle over a drink which escalates to more drinks and soon, peri-menopausal Jane finds herself confiding in Reb and exposing her dirty secret about wishing her kid Stu, who is deformed in a way from a skin condition, wasn't hers. When she finds out her husband is cheating on her, it's not long before the floodgates open and with them repeated proclamations of, "I want to die" from her lips.

"In reading through the plays, Beth, I keep thinking of something Arthur Miller used to say, which is that writing a play is like living in a state of controlled hysteria," said Lucas.

Meanwhile, Mike is convinced his marriage to Jane is over and tells the drunken Pye, clad in a bathrobe and bathed in perfume, of his desire to spend his life with her. Pye, on the other hand, isn't looking for a committed relationship founded on true love, but focused on her monetary gain. Billy, who she summons late at night, doesn't want to assume the role of brother to the troubled Reb and is himself enmeshed in finding someone to love him.

"We are not dating," says Pye to Billy slightly annoyed, as she hands a bouquet of flowers back to Billy that he presents to her upon their late-night rendezvous. At one point, Pye, Billy and Mike find themselves splitting up a bag of chips in a feeble attempt to fill their voids with junk food.

"It's the shortest day of the year and the longest night of the year," says Lucas to Henley. "And these people are facing the darkest night they can face. Any little piece of thread that it holding their life together snaps."

When Reb phones Billy to tell him of his plans to head out to The Watts Towers to admire the view before jumping off, Billy's love for him is tested and he compulsively goes straight to the top to stop him. The siblings admired the glittery view of the City of Angels skyline and how the tiny shimmery pieces, which appear like shattered glass, came together to fix what seemed broken.

When the Jackson, Mississippi-born Henley lived in Los Angles, she went to The Watts Towers and recalled being struck by how "magnificently tawdry" they were. She incorporated that into her notebooks that she kept scrawled with her observations that eventually became "Exposed."

"There's a fragility to it, but also just a sincere piece of art," said Henley. "A sincere piece of longing to express and piece together to make it more beautiful."

Henley said she would rework the play after seeing the performance.

"Exposed" will encore on June 2, 3, 4, and 5 at 8 pm at the Black Box Performing Arts Center in Englewood. Get tickets here.

Photo Credit: Lianna Albrizio