From Scars to Art: Alabaster’s Rendering of Empathy in Our World Today
Goats, women, and paintings: it is hard to predict exactly what the play Alabaster is about when first looking at its poster. This nontraditional Southern play, running at the Fountain Theater until March 30th, elegantly connects these three seemingly unrelated topics to comment on the role of art, relationships, and resilience in our world today.
The central plot revolves around two women: June (Virginia Newcomb) and Alice (Erin Pineda). June is a tornado survivor who spends her life painting, talking to her goat Weezy (Carolyn Messina), and tending to her farm, all as a means to isolate herself from the outside world. June invites Alice, a photographer from New York City, to take pictures of her scars so that she can include them in a greater artwork on female survivors. This relationship is initially tense – June’s sudden, awkward outbursts makes Alice uncomfortable and closed off – but as they each gradually reveal their tormenting histories, the two find a comfort in each other that goes beyond the confines of friendship.
As June and Alice unravel their histories to each other, another story takes place outside the Alabama farmhouse: Weezy and Bib (Laura Gardner), two goats, experience life on the farm. Although the goats are dressed like humans and can speak to the audience and the human characters, Messina and Gardner’s facial expressions are unmistakably goat-like. While this might sound unsettling, these actresses made their unusual characteristics seem completely natural. Weezy, the younger goat, brings a lightness and humor to this intense play, sometimes revealing June’s inner thoughts, conversing with the humans, or sharing her own opinions to the audience, acting as both a narrator and a character.
Although the story is filled with people losing loved ones, the relationships that form as the characters share their grief brings a sense of hope to the narrative. Messina succinctly sums it up: “the whole play is about caregiver connection.” Messina further explains that Weezy is the ultimate caregiver – she provides “tough love” to the characters and the audience, keeping people honest and helping June let go of her traumatic past. Alice also serves as a sort of guide to June, giving her a chance to explore the world beyond her farmhouse while she learns to cope with her own pain as well.
Forming relationships is not the only way characters find ways to cope with their past. June’s passion for creating folk art and Alice’s career as a photographer provide an outlet for their suffering. While Alice confronts suffering by documenting its effects on physical bodies, June uses art to escape her trauma, painting idyllic scenes on wood scraps she refuses to display publicly. This makes viewers question the role of art – is it meant to provide a place to escape reality, or confront it? When examining the purpose of this play, it seems the latter is true. After all, this play, written by Audrey Cefaly, depicts a grim and realistic (but hopeful) narrative – with a tone far different from the idyllic scenes in June’s paintings.
In fact, the directing by Casey Stangl emphasizes the realism of Cefaly’s play. The characters stay on stage during intermission, stretching, reading, and eating. Weezy wanders into the audience, sitting in the aisles during the play. Fiction meddles with fact. The role of the possibly divine, mind-reading goats further blurs the line between reality and imagination. At several points, one questions the existence of Weezy – is she June’s conscience, a God whispering the truth to Alice, or just a goat with a voice? This question never gets answered, and doesn’t need to. Cefaly and Stangl suggest that reality can blend with fiction to reveal a truth.
This play reveals many truths – too many to cover in a single article. As Pineda explains, “there is no core to this play.” Pineda states that the complexity of this play makes it so that everyone interprets it differently when watching it – all watchers can uniquely experience the play as they relate it to their personal circumstances. As a recent mother, Pineda finds this play enriching, and finds endless ways of experiencing the play each night as she plays Alice.
The malleability of this play’s message makes its title fitting. The word Alabaster is more than just a tornado-prone town in Alabama – it is a porous rock, Messina points out to me in our interview. The stone is soft: it is easily broken down by natural elements, and therefore serves as an excellent medium for art. In other words, Alabaster is vulnerable to pressure, but a source of beauty when rightly treated – but aren’t we all?