A play presented at BGSU later this month will look familiar to anyone who has attended a high school wrestling match. After opponents shake hands and take their corners, a conflict ensues. From there, the action may fall out of bounds, result in a pin, or lead to take-downs, escapes or reversals.
The Wrestling Season is a play about teens grappling with issues of identity amid forces of peer pressure. It’s a different kind of staging than you may expect – the cast wears wrestling singlets and wrestling shoes during the entire performance and all the movement on stage happens in the context of a wrestling match.
The set is bare: a wrestling mat on the ground, in a black box theater. Nothing to distract from the gestures, holds and dialogue at the center of the set. The play was developed in 1998 by playwright Laurie Brooks and first produced in 2000 in New York City — an actual lifetime ago for current college students. In that time, for issues like sexual identity, social implications have changed quite a bit.
Though there are still plenty of points of identity for kids to struggle with. How to deal with peer pressure, rumors while navigating those things in the world of high school.” Brooks is noted for her dramatic writing for students. This play was written in the 1990s in response to working with teenagers on scenes that reflect their lived reality. She has said, “…The same topics came up again and again–issues of identity, gay issues. I wanted to somehow write all these issues into a play. Then I happened to go to a wrestling match, and there was the metaphor laid before me.” The play reflects “the social quagmire that high school is. It’s a precarious set- ting,” said Mariani. “While it is a very heavy show, it has humorous moments, and the cast is finding the lightness in the script.” Elsewhere Productions
The Wrestling Season is part of a theatre series at BGSU called Elsewhere Productions, for shows that are experimental, or that challenge preconceived ideas about what theatre should look like, or sound like, or accomplish. Often Elsewhere productions are set in a non-traditional theatre space, or use minimal sets or costumes. Movement-based performance The play was selected for production this season by director Jarod Mariani, who is currently working on a dissertation on sports as performance.
He grew up in a family that had wrestlers, though his personal sports playing experience involved football. This play’s approach to staging naturally appealed to Mari- ani. When you think of standard blocking and movement in a stage play, you may think of walking, perhaps even dancing if there’s a musical number.
In The Wrestling Season all movement is in the context of a wrestling match. If it happens on the mat, it happens in the play. “It’s different from any other show from a movement standpoint,” says Mariani. The Wrestling Season, by Laurie Brooks. Directed by Jarod Mariani. Eva Marie Saint Theatre in the Wolfe Center for the Arts on Jan. 27-28 at 8pm. Admission to the event is free and open to the public. 419-372-2222
