BWW Preview: A Butterfly Flaps Its Wings over 154 & PARADISE
By: Maggie Yates Jan. 15, 2015
154 & Paradise: a confluence of thoroughfares at the edge of Los Padres National Forest between Highway 154 and Paradise Road; an intersection of asphalt that indicates human development, somewhere in the distance, in the direction of traffic. Places of passage like this-corridors between locations-are ripe with metaphoric representation of anything and everything along the timeline between here and there, regardless of what, specifically, here and there symbolize. In the upcoming world premier of Gerald DiPego's 154 & Paradise (by Peter Frisch and The Producing Unit), this Santa Barbara front-country junction is the setting for James Henny's accidental death. In an examination of the enigmatic complexity of a heretofore unrealized community nexus, 154 & Paradise (which opens January 23rd at Center Stage) describes a point at which the lives of characters related through the common experience of knowing one man, Henny, converge.
After the discovery of Henny's demise, various associates of the deceased are called together to aid in the investigation of his death, as run by a character knows as the "Examiner." As the layers of Henny's life are revealed and the details of his death are uncovered, so too elucidated are the intricate consequences instigated by any single action. The proverbial butterfly flaps its wings somewhere over Los Padres, and the resulting breeze, which gathers momentum to become a gale, is felt throughout the county; a man dies under mysterious circumstances at the junction of 154 and Paradise, and the reverberations of this event echo and bounce amid the remaining characters. Their understanding of their own existence wavers and evolves, and characters and audience alike are prompted to re-examine the gradients of meaning in every detail of their lives, however deceptively inconsequential.
1 54 & Paradise is a collaborative effort between Peter Frisch, whose copious and diverse theatrical credits include the direction of over 150 plays, musicals, and operas, and playwright/screenwriter Gerald DiPego, whose writing credits include films such as Phenomenon and The Forgotten. Described as reminiscent of The Twilight Zone, Six Characters in Search of an Author, and 12 Angry Men, 154 & Paradise weaves elements of magical realism and meta-theatre into an intellectually compelling mystery. Featuring Rich Hoag, Leslie Story, Ivy Vahanian, Bill Egan, Kathy Marden, Ian Cummings, John Brindle, Edward Romine, and Katherine Bottoms, 154 & Paradise is a representation of connections that shows how choosing a direction is, in itself, an act of definition. It's more than the story of a mysterious death at a point between here and there; it's an illustration of the junctions in life where the inevitability of society's momentum and the indefinite direction of free will unite to create eddies of personal destiny.
154 & PARADISE
By Gerald DiPego
Directed by Peter Frisch
facebook.com/TheProducingUnit
Tickets: centerstagetheater.org
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