Preview
JENNY
Broad Minds Productions
Written by Marjie Rynearson
Directed by Brenda Finley
Runs until May 14
Pumphouse Theatres
After presenting a pair of light comedies – Six Women With Brain Death and Scrooge: The Female Version – Broad Minds Productions is closing its current season with something weightier: the Canadian première of Chicago playwright Marjie Rynearson’s 1998 drama Jenny, a work that delves into the process of grieving and dealing with the sudden and violent loss of a loved one.
Directed for Broad Minds by Brenda Finley, Jenny is inspired by the diaries and sculptures of young American sculptor Jenny Read, who was murdered in her warehouse studio in 1976. The play tells the fictional story of Dorothy, Jenny’s mother, who must make a journey of difficult self-discovery, first living in her daughter’s studio and eventually finding a measure of understanding through Jungian psychoanalysis.
Seamlessly shifting between the two situations is the story of Susan, the murderer’s mother, whose path, as the play draws to a close, comes to mirror Dorothy’s own.
This production is a homecoming for Finley, the former Calgary TV anchorwoman and journalist, who at the turn of the millennium made the difficult decision to leave her broadcasting career and return to university. She recently completed her master’s degree in directing at the University of Alberta and says she’s happy to be back in Calgary to direct this rather challenging play.
"I made a promise to myself to only take on projects that terrify me," she says of her personal philosophy. "And this project both delights and terrifies me." She jokingly adds that she hopes her cast doesn’t find out how she’s feeling.
Finley’s production of Jenny is ambitious, and she hopes it will strike a chord with audiences and have them identifying with the journey of self-discovery and acceptance that Dorothy must make.
"What I love about the piece is that we, all of us, encounter crises in our lives," she says. "A crisis can cause a fracturing. I have discovered that when it heals, it’s stronger." Finley goes on to explain that the Jungian process of dealing with trauma – the process that Dorothy must undertake – is to interpret images from the subconscious, generally through drawing, synthesize that understanding with conscious thought and eventually arrive at a self-awakening. It is a process that Finley finds both fascinating and inspiring. "I love the philosophies of Carl Jung," she says.
Heavy stuff, but Finley’s staging should help the audience make that journey with Dorothy. "The challenge was, how do I portray this descent into the dungeon and this re-emergence?" she says. "How do you come to terms with something so horrific?" One of the solutions comes from designer Ian Martens, the Pumphouse Theatres’ technical director, who has created what Finley calls "an installation theatre space," transforming the Pumphouse’s intimate Joyce Doolittle Theatre into Jenny’s studio. Audience members will literally be sitting on the set, and the characters will move around and among them. "Everyone descends into the dark and emerges at the end," she says.
A further challenge was replicating the time period of the late 1960s and early 1970s without affecting the universality of Rynearson’s play. But Finley feels that the audience will see the story as one that could happen in any time period.
"The mother’s journey is at the crux of the play," she stresses. "Even though the music and costumes are evocative of that era, there will be a timeless quality to the themes." |
Copyright ©2005 FFWD. All rights reserved.