By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Actor Neil Powell was sitting at a table at Grounds for Thought enjoying a candy bar that was given to him by the woman sitting next to him.
He is enjoying the candy like any seven year old would. He announces: “Number 10: Kind old people who aren’t weird and don’t smell funny.”
The audience spread at tables around them laugh.
Powell is one of two actors who will present “Every Brilliant Thing,” a play for one actor with extensive audience participation, September 19 and 20 in the University of Toledo’s Center for the Performing Arts Recital Hall. The play is directed by Melissa Shaffer, of Bowling Green, and is being presented by Issue Box Theatre.
The company’s founder and artistic director Rosie Best will perform the play Friday, Sept. 20 with Powell on stage Thursday, Sept. 19.
“Every Brilliant Thing” has plenty of laughter in it. Written by Duncan Macmillan with comedian Jonny Donahoe, it mixes theater and stand-up comedy. But its topic is no laughing matter.
Powell’s seven-year-old character is eating that candy in a hospital waiting room. His mother has attempted suicide. His father retrieves him from school, but when the mother sees him she says, “not him.”
He waits.
To cope the character makes a list for his mother of “every brilliant thing about the world, everything worth living for.”
Spaghetti and meat balls and wearing a cape make the list as do roller coasters. Ice cream is number 1.
Eventually the character presents the list to his mother. She never mentions it, but he knows she read it. “She corrected my spelling.”
The play follows the character — written so it can be played by an actor of any gender, and of variable age — as they confront their mother’s depression, and repeated suicide attempts. The play chronicles the emotional effect this has on the child, as they grow to be a teen, and then into adulthood. And the list grows along the way, sometimes neglected, sometimes added to by others.
Issue Box, Best said, is four years old. She is trained both as a theater educator and a social worker. “I came upon this idea of wouldn’t it be great if we could do theater not just to entertain people — not that there’s anything wrong with entertaining people — but wouldn’t it be good if we also could help change things through theater.”
The troupe has staged the musicals “Next to Normal,” about a woman suffering from bipolar disease, and “Spring Awakening,” about teenagers grappling with sexuality in a repressive society.
They also use storytelling with patients suffering from dementia.
When Shaffer suggested “Every Brilliant Thing,” Best recognized that it was “perfectly down our alley … because it’s a script that touches on mental health and how young person is comforted by this coping strategy,” she said.
“It helps break some of the stigma around growing up with family members who deal with mental health issues. And boy, do we need that. It has to be OK to say, ‘I need some help.’”
Shaffer saw “Every Brilliant Thing” staged by CATCO in Columbus. “I loved the audience participation,” she said. “Any script that brings the audience in as part of the show really excites me.”
That may be “Clue: The Musical,”which she directed for Black Swamp Players last November, or the decidedly more serious “Every Brilliant Thing.”
The audience has a number of roles. Sometimes an audience member just calls out an item on the list, other times they play other characters. At the brief preview at Grounds for Thought, Beverly Elwazani was called on to play the school counselor who uses a sock puppet during therapy.
The audience participation shows that as alone as the character may feel at times, there are always others around.
(Read a review of Broken Spectacle’s 2017 production of “Every Brilliant Thing.”)
