Junior Annie Portnoy as Erica and junior Danny Nathan as Father Perry in Peter Hanrahan's surreal new drama "Caught in Carnation", winner of the 2000 A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Competition.
By Liam Otten
April 20, 2001
A priest and a ghost, a tragic fire, a frozen lake. The stage is set for Peter Hanrahan's surreal new drama "Caught in Carnation," which examines the ties of faith and history that bind two men of the cloth in wintry upstate New York.
Hanrahan, a junior majoring in English, won the Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences' 2000 A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Competition, which sponsors one full theatrical production each spring. Winning plays are chosen one year before performance, and playwrights spend the interim period developing and refining their works, most notably during the annual A.E. Hotchner Play Development Lab, conducted each fall by a visiting theater professional.
Showtimes are 8 p.m. April 25-27 and 2 p.m. April 28-29 in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre in Mallinckrodt Center.
Junior Annie Portnoy as Erica and junior Danny Nathan as Father Perry in Peter Hanrahan's surreal new drama "Caught in Carnation", winner of the 2000 A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Competition. |
Set in a fictional town, "Caught in Carnation" opens with the arrival of young Father Perry (played by junior Danny Nathan), sent by the archdiocese to succeed his one-time mentor, the elderly Father Iker (senior John Spernoga). Perry, despite his youth, is a haunted man --literally haunted, with the amicable, if rambunctious, ghost of his former lover Erica (junior Annie Portnoy) stowing along in his suitcase. Yet the fiery Erica is soon joined by the icy, mysterious Mina (sophomore Erica Nagel), and it becomes clear that Iker, like his protˇgˇ, is tormented by a dark, unforgiving past.
Hanrahan, a former altar boy, said part of his motivation for writing "Caught in Carnation" was to frankly investigate the often hidden emotional lives of priests.
"I guess I got a good view of priests and how they interact," he said of his Catholic school days. "I was able to see them both at the altar and as just people.
"There's a strong element of confinement in the play," Hanrahan added. "Perry and Iker are caught in a small town, they're caught by the weather, by their vows and by dogma. And they're both coming to terms with guilt --their respective lovers have died, directly or indirectly, because of things that they've done."
"It's a poetic, beautifully written story about love and guilt," said Kerry Mulvaney, a first-year PAD graduate student who directs the five-member cast. Mulvaney, whose resume includes stints working with new playwrights at the Actor's Theatre of Louisville, Ky., and the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago (where she also served as assistant to actor John Malkovich), added, "Peter is one of the most eccentric and evocative young writers that I've encountered. His words are so fresh and quirky that you think, 'No one else could write like that.'
"The action and the text are very dense, and we wanted to make sure the design elements weren't distracting," Mulvaney noted, explaining her decision to employ a simplified, arena-style set. "The story is so self-contained, the characters so bound by time and circumstances, we also felt it was important for the audience to be able to see them from all sides, unguarded --almost caught on stage."
Costumes, lighting and sets were designed by sophomores Cassandra Beaver, Jen Goldstein and Caity Mold-Zern, respectively. The production also stars sophomore Jane Rhyu as parish housekeeper Janeane, whom Mulvaney describes as "the sort of mother figure who tries to keep everyone else grounded in reality."
A.E. Hotchner, a 1940 graduate of the University, is the author of numerous screenplays, novels, plays and memoirs, including the 1966 volume "Papa Hemingway," which recounts his long friendship with the famous writer. His memoir, "King of the Hill," which recounts growing up in St. Louis, was made into a feature film in 1993.
Tickets --$8 for University faculty, staff and students and senior citizens, and $12 for the general public --are available at the Edison Theatre Box Office (935-6543) and all MetroTix outlets (534-1111). For more information, call 935-6543.
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