By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The women in the liposuction clinic are finally getting a chance to say their piece.
The one-act play “The Most Massive Woman Wins” by Madeleine George was scheduled to be staged last April in the Eva Marie Saint Theatre a BGSU.
But we all know how that went.
Now Lauren Lash and her assistant director Missy Jude have taken the production with its cast of four outside on the lawn that slopes down from the east side of the Wolfe Center for the Arts.
Audience members arrange themselves under the moon and early stars on spaces marked by an X in groups to two and three, appropriately distanced.
The sound of traffic on I-75 is evident in the distance.
There is no lighting, except for flashlights Lash and Jude have distributed among audience members.
These are used to illuminate the cast members – Alyx Fisher, Alexis Reinbolt, Alexis Roberts and Sara Madden – as they move about on the perimeter of the seating area.
As they prowl the space, they tell their stories, in voices loud and clear enough to be heard, of how they came to this clinic to have the fat sucked out of them.
The stories are dark, of unrealistic parental and social expectations, touching on spousal abuse, self-harm and rape. Because everyone has been stuck inside consuming more social media having this reminder of how the media shapes our ideas about body image is useful, Jude said.
The staging has been changed five or six times since spring, said Lash, who graduated in May but still lives in BG. But she thinks this is the best.
“It was a really interesting experience because our original idea was we were going to do the whole thing based on children’s games and how children like to touch each other,” Jude, a senior, said. “Then all of a sudden with COVID and everything we had to literally turn everything upside down because we had to stay six feet apart from each other.”
Lash said they spent time consulting with the faculty advisor Jonathan Chambers and Jim Dachik, theatre business operations manager, about the protocols that need to be put in place.
Chambers asked them at a point whether this was prose or poetry. As the production has evolved, Lash said, it has become poetry. The children’s games with their chants, sometimes mocking, ringing out.
“The actors are working together and cohabiting the space together but from a distance,” she said. “That’s not only interesting to watch on stage, but as a reflection of what we do as people.”
Lesa Lockford, who chairs the Department of Theatre and Film, said that this is theater in the time of a pandemic.
The show has limited reach. Only 40 “seats” were available for each of the two nights, and all are spoken for. Later this semester students will produce shows shared on Zoom. But, because of licensing, only students will be able to watch, and the productions will not be recorded.
At the end of the semester, on a date yet to be finalized, the musical “Theory of Relativity” will be produced virtually and available, for a small charge, to the general public, she said.
First year students Sophia Encina and Grace Sharrow-Ducsay were enjoying being outside on a blanket, munching on snacks, waiting for the show to begin.
Sharrow-Ducsay, a forensic science major, said she enjoyed going to plays when she was in high school, and that was something she was looking forward to at BGSU. But “during COVID I wasn’t expecting to get to see a show.”
So, when this was offered, “we just decided to come,” Encina, a theater major, said. “It’s nice to be outside and able to do this.”
