Entertainment :: Theatre
Lisa D’Amour channels the supernatural for new play by Joe Siegel
EDGE New England EditorMonday Nov 2, 2009
Providence’s Perishable Theatre began its 2009-2010 season with the regional premiere of the gothic drama Anna Bella Eema by playwright Lisa D’Amour.
The play, spoken and sung by three women, completes its run at Perishable Theatre on November 7.
D’Amour’s play concerns ten-year-old Anna Bella and her hermetic mother Irene who live in a dilapidated trailer on the outskirts of an anonymous town. When their trailer park is marked for demolition because of interstate highway expansion, Irene refuses to leave. In this moment of crisis, Anna Bella creates a girl out of the mud behind their trailer home. This mud-girl -- named Anna Bella Eema -- helps Anna Bella and Irene channel the supernatural and face the life they must live in the world outside their trailer home.
Demonizing the victim
The production features Elise Morrison as Anna Bella, Patricia A. Thomas as Irene, and Katie Mulholland as Anna Bella Eema; and is directed by Kym Moore.
D’Amour was inspired to write the play by a news story she saw about a woman whose children were taken away from her after neighbors had complained of the poor condition of the trailer she was living in.
"They were really demonizing her," D’Amour recalled, noting she empathized with the woman when she was interviewed on television.
D’Amour thought it would be an interesting idea to explore how society treats underprivileged people and how the underprivileged person sees life.
Anna Bella is a "precocious" girl," D’Amour said. "She’s in a difficult situation because her mother is falling apart."
Anna Bella is more or less forced through circumstance to become an adult and help Irene cope with the situation of being thrown out of their home.
D’Amour describes Irene as an "incredibly intelligent woman with a wild imagination."
"She’s not very well-equipped to live in the contemporary modern world," D’Amour explained. "She’s a very strong woman who’s retreated inside of herself and her imagination."
One of the themes of Anna Bella Eema is about the assumptions we may make about people who are different than us.
"I would love audiences to be thinking about the relationship between the urban city world and the more wild world of nature and perhaps the supernatural," D’Amour said.
D’Amour received her M.F.A. in playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James A. Michener Playwriting Fellow. She currently teaches playwriting in the Brown University Theatre Arts and Performance Studies department.
Anna Bella Eema by Lisa D’Amour continues through November 7, 2009 at the Perishable Theatre, 95 Empire Street, Providence. Tickets available at www.arttixri.com or 401-621-6123. For more information visit the theater’s website.
Joe Siegel has written for a number of other GLBT publications, including In newsweekly and Options.
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