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2012 Rachel White. All rights reserved.
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| Tad Chitwood and Laurene Scalf in rehearsal for Jordan Harrison's Futura. Photo courtesy of Theatre [502]. |
When Amy Attaway moved
back to Louisville from New York, she didn’t think she would stay. She wasn’t
sure she could be a real artist in Louisville or that there were people she
wanted to work with. Then she auditioned for the Necessary Theatre, a company
dedicated to rarely performed plays, and her feelings changed. She met Necessary’s
artistic director, Tad Chitwood; she met actress Laurene Scalf; she soon met
young artists like herself – Gil Reyes and Mike Brooks – artists she would soon
see as artistic collaborators, mentors and friends. Two years later, Amy found
herself directing Tad and Laurene in Impossible
Marriage. She began to see herself as a director.
“It was the
beginning of so many things,” Amy said. “Necessary gave me and Gil and Mike
some of our first really important artistic experiences after we moved back to
Louisville and helped us launch into the local theater scene in a really
meaningful way.”
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Now, seven years
after Impossible Marriage, Tad,
Laurene and Amy are working together once again, this time for Amy’s company, Theatre [502]; and the relationship seems to have come full circle. They are working on
Jordan Harrison’s Futura, a thriller about
a dystopian future in which books and paper have been banned and two typographers
are trying to save the world. It is a play that speaks deeply to the mission of [502] and to all of the artists involved because it is about passion and teaching.
“I love this play,”
Amy says. “I think it’s brilliant, so timely, so smart and I think it addresses
issues that I find personally really moving. It has a finger on the pulse of the
whole zeitgeist right now.” That zeitgeist, according to Amy, is the advance of
the digital age, the age of Nooks, Kindles and iPhones. When Amy read it, she
immediately responded to its ideas and thought of Tad and Laurene.
“I thought, if I’m
going to do the play, I have to have Laurene, and I have to have Tad. When I
read this play, I heard their voices in my head.”
Tad and Laurene
were equally taken by the play, its courage at addressing the big ideas and the
way that it directly engages the issues of the digital age that we are facing
now.
“We’re moving into
an age where books, actual physical books, are becoming quaint,” says Tad. “The
transition from oral to written communication was traumatic and ultimately
great. Are we creating super literacy or super illiteracy?”
I sensed when talking
to Tad, Laurene and Amy that there is an anxiety about this kind of change, and
it is an anxiety especially potent for theater artists, who depend on passion
and love of language for their livelihood and for the future of their art. However, they are happy to go through the
process together. The play is not an easy one with its unusual form and subject
matter, but they have developed a deep trust. This trust allows them to push
new boundaries and keeps them honest.
“I know their
tricks,” Amy says. And they know hers.
In many ways, Tad
and Laurene are passing the theater torch on to the next generation of artists
– artists like Amy. The mission of Necessary flows on in the company like
Theatre [502]. Like the typographers in the play, they hold strong to their passion,
a passion for an art form whose future always seems so precarious.
As Amy says, “The
play is about time and it’s what you pass along to the younger generation. To
be working on that idea with Tad and Laurene is pretty exciting. Also, they
really get to fight – really smart intellectual fight – which is really fun to
watch.”
Futura
by Jordan Harrison
directed by Amy Attaway
June 1-9, 2012
Theatre [502]
Victor Jory Theatre at
Actors Theatre of Louisville
Actors Theatre of Louisville
316 West Main Street
Louisville, KY 40202
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