Don’t Look Now, But Things Could Get A Little Murky
By John Swartz
Mariposa Arts Theatre’s current production, WROL (Without Rule Of Law) is a little different. The cast are all Grade 8 students. It’s also an examination of society from the perspective of people that age, as written by an adult.
The playwright, Michaela Jeffery, picked up a number of awards for this maybe looking-glass peek into how the youngest generation sees the breakdown of society. It’s first performance was in 2018, so ahead of the pandemic, but the American destruction had already begun, disinformation and foreign meddling in Canadian affairs was ramping up, and rallies about climate change led by youngsters around the world were making national media headlines.
It possible one of the messages the author intended is kids aren’t stupid. They may not be able to articulate their anxiety in ways mature audiences (parents, teachers, politicians, etc.) would understand, but that doesn’t mean they don’t see we’ve made a wrong turn and their immature reactions aren’t misplaced, they are just undeveloped.
I think the most interesting thing about the play are video breaks interspersing the action, several of them, which pull the characters on stage out of the action into Youtube territory. Several of them are tutorials by Jo (Devon Griffin), the first of which mimics real world Youtube videos in that the lesson is derailed by lack of planning (her so called survival shelter, made of plastic dog food sacks is a few sacks short of effectiveness).
The one that was most relevant to the underlying message of the script was a video by Maureen (Chloe Davison-Frustaci). It starts as an apology offered for some incident (presumably at school), then taken back because despite unintentionally getting out of hand, in doing so it revealed what she said amounts to – when us younger kids rely on you older folks to know what to do, it’s clear you don’t know what to do anymore than we do. So the unintended consequence of whatever the event was revealed a flaw, or flaws and she’s fine with that. Maybe the adults in the room could use it as a ‘teachable moment’. You’re welcome.
And therein lies a hint of the motivation for the action. The kids are scared. They know things are not right. They think adults aren’t paying attention, or don’t care. They believe they have to think and act for themselves because no one else will.
Juvenile response may be a characteristic, but responding is the point.
By kids, what is meant here and in the context of the play, are the girls. There are two more, Sarah (Gemma Cox) and Vic (Stella Minges). Vic is the odd one out, not part of the plotting to stave off their demise because of some unnamed, pending catastrophic event, but brought along as an interloper, who is ‘OK and will be useful.
Then there is Robbie (Grayson Cooper). This boy is the foil. While the girls are almost hysterically banded together in their mission, he is the one throwing up roadblocks and pointing out overlooked details of logic and plans. We all know someone like this. Stuck in tradition and the way things have always been done, skeptical of the fever, a conventional wisdom espouser who couldn’t think of an alternative on his own, or recognize one hitting him between the eyes. You might say a conservative thinker.
His entrenchment in what he knows and has assimilated is as extreme as with the fantastical imaginations of doom the girls have. Being in Grade 8 it’s almost comical to watch him unwind as he tries too hard to get the girls to see his logic, or defend his stubbornness. The words are in the script, but the action is no different than remembering your own kid’s flailing attempts to justify why they should be allowed to stay out later. One might call it overacting if an adult actor was doing so.
This is a good point to drop in a constructive observation. Being children on the verge of being teenagers and not seasoned stage performers, they fall prey to not controlling their passionately delivered lines. There is a difference between shouting and being loud. Clarity of diction is important so lines, especially punch lines, don’t get lost by the audience.
The action takes place inside an abandoned cabin in the woods. The back story is a cult used to occupy it and suddenly disappeared. Nobody seemed to be too bothered by the disappearance and it seems to be a good place to meet up and plan the group’s survival.
Except for that one chained up, boarded up window, which until now no one has tried to open. It seems to be the opening to some kind of pit, shaft, tunnel or root cellar. And it makes for a convenient way for the cast to exit at the play’s conclusion.
Characters in plays are stereotypes. The audience needs to get who the people are quickly in order to move the story along. So in this case we get a male opposed to a group of women. Release the stereotypes. Collectively the women are united in thought (mostly) but not too worried they have all the answers; they’ve got a direction, an outcome in mind and that is good enough. Meanwhile Robbie voices the whatabouts and has no trouble telling the girls where the faults of their logic are. That in itself could have been the focus of this play, or some play, but here the conflict is seeing danger and reacting to those in the rest of their world who carry on like it’s just another Tuesday.
WROL (Without Rule Of Law) runs to February 15 at the Opera House and you can get tickets online.
(Photos by Natalie Baker, Mariposa Arts Theatre) Main: The cast of Mariposa Arts Theatre’s WROL (Without Rule Of Law).
