Every director faces three questions when starting a project. Well, sometimes more, but at least three: What play, why that play, and why that play now? For drama professor Luke Jorgensen, the answer to the first question wasn't hard. His directorial debut at Tufts University is Six Degrees of Separation, written by John Guare. It opens tonight in the Balch Arena Theater.
"I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people," says Ouisa Kittredge (played by Allison Clear) about halfway through the play "Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet." This idea is at the center of the play, and of Jorgensen's vision.
"I've wanted to direct this play since I first read it," said Jorgensen. "The structure of it just stuck with me. It's very intimate and free flowing. The characters speak their minds directly to the audience, and in this space..." - He gestures to the Arena Theater around him - "...the characters can look and connect right with the audience."
The play is all about connections. Based on a true story, the play involves several of members of the upper-upper class community in Manhattan being swindled by an outrageous, brilliant, pathological-lying gay man named Paul (Jeff Brea) who claims to be the son of Sidney Poitier. He staggers in to the Kittredge home one night, a victim of a mugging attack, asking for help and saying he knows their children. Ouisa and her husband, Flan (Graham Outerbridge) are at first cautious, then interested, and then enraptured with what Paul has to say. He spins an involving tale, talking of his father and a theory explaining every major assassination attempt of the past 50 years. He completely talks his way into their hearts, and is asked to stay the night. Then, the next morning...
What happens next is left for you to find out, but it turns out that Flan and Ouisa are one of many people that Paul has visited. We meet their kids, we meet their neighbors, we meet the neighbors' kids, we even meet their doorman. Everyone in the play has some connection to Paul, who is not a friend of their children, not a college graduate, and probably not even named Paul. He is also not just a con man, either. The play has no set heroes or villains, which is one of the reasons Jorgensen was drawn to it.
"The play has no set structure," he explained. "When a character needs to say something, he just comes on and says it. When the setting needs to change, it does. No scenes, no acts, just moving thoughts, emotions and people."
The set is deceptively simple. A beige floor with a few pieces of furniture greets the audience, along with a huge painting and two screens that project pictures of people sitting. Much of the play concerns art, as the Kittredges are art dealers: paintings, famous painters, and their use of color and emotion. This influences the lighting, and thus the bland stage becomes alive with brilliant shades of red, green, blue, gold, and pink. Each color paints the stage with a mood, thought, expression, or emotion.
"It's sort of a Pleasantville effect," said Jorgensen. "The colors bring out things from the characters that they've never experience before, or maybe haven't in a long time."
But the simplistic design scheme does not take away from the play's depth.
"Six Degrees still has a lot to say," Jorgenson assured. "I think people have lived with the idea of political correctness for a while, and are now experienced at expressing how they feel without really saying it.
"When I asked this cast to think of a specific incident of overt racism, they couldn't think of much. But when I asked them to think harder, think of something subtle but definitely there... everyone had witnessed or been involved in at least one incident of racism or bigotry on some level. There are a lot of characters in this play that will be startlingly familiar to a lot of the audience. A distilled memory of that friend from high school, that uncle who always talked that much, etc."
In fully answering the question 'why now?' it turns out that this wasn't Jorgensen's first opportunity to produce Six Degrees. "This is my first show here, but by no means my first show. I wanted to do this first at Boston College but..." - he laughs - "...I hope my boss doesn't read this. I wanted to do it there but I got lots of concerned faces. Lots of people concerned that maybe it'd be offensive, maybe the time was right. But when I brought it up here, the first reactions I got was enthusiasm."
That energy has spilled over into the cast, a veritable who's-who of previous department and student-directed theater efforts. The leads from all of this year's shows have returned to portray the many characters who show up to complete all the various connections made during the play. Romeo and Juliet are here (David Greene and Nicole Frattaroli), Uncle Peck and his wife from How I Learned to Drive (Graham Outerbridge and Ann Blumenstock), half of the cast from Stop Kiss (Rachel Jablin, Kevin Miller, and Sam Rivers), and lots of the tavern inhabitants from Playboy of the Western World. Each makes some kind of mark on the play, distilling that memory of the rich, the poor, those that grow in life and those who stay where it's comfortable. "The issues this play deals with - examining closely how similar and connected we all are, and yet how we still manage to keep ourselves apart - still rings true, even if it's over ten years old," said Jorgensen. "But, and perhaps most importantly, it's about ideas and people, not issues. It's still a comedy, but it's a comedy that stings because it brings up all these problems, and promises no solutions. I like that."
Six Degrees of Separation opens this Thursday and will run until April 20. It runs about one hour and 40 minutes with no intermission. Tickets are available at the Balch Arena Box office.
