Arts
Local playwright
unveils work
on Tennessee
Williams
THEATRE
It all began when LSA Junior
Max Vinogradov and his good
friend
Jackson
Abohasira
decided to make short films
together, creating funny scripts
to match their ideas. Those
short films turned into a series
of small projects that combined
creativity with a touch of
theatre.
Vinogradov
recently
won
the Hopwood award in Drama,
and the Dennis McIntyre Prize
for his play, “A Night of Stars
with
Tennessee
Williams.”
The
Slipstream
Theatre
Initiative, located in Ferndale,
MI, has taken Vinogradov’s
script to the stage. In addition
to
Vinogradov’s
success,
Abohasira, who plays Andy
Warhol and Marlon Brando
in the show, recently won the
Wilde Award for Rising Star.
“Moving it from writing to
the stage is an awesome thing
and a bad thing,” Vinogradov
said. “You look at this precious
thing that you wrote and you’re
like ‘this is what I was thinking
about,’ but at the same time,
so much of it is letting the
actors discover the characters
themselves.”
The play explores the life
of
Tennessee
Williams,
an
American
playwright
that
revolutionized
20th-century
drama in America with works
such as “The Glass Menagerie,”
“A Streetcar Named Desire,”
“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”
and “Sweet Bird of Youth.”
Vinogradov’s play, “A Night
of
Stars
with
Tennessee
Williams,” projects a series
of Williams’ memories, which
include numerous stars, like
Frank Merlo, Truman Capote,
Andy Warhol, Marlon Brando
and
Greta
Garbo,
among
others, who come to Williams
with hopes of landing a role in
one of his plays.
The play moves through a
series of memories, recalling
the lives of stars that brought
Williams’s
scripts
to
life.
Though the connects scenes
with
iconic
figures,
they
are somewhat obstructed by
Williams’s recollection of the
past.
“He (Williams) was an
alcoholic and a drug abuser, so
his memories are destroyed,
in many senses,” Vinogradov
explained. “He is trying to
change
the
memories
he
recalls, because there are
things he really screwed up,
and relationships he is trying
to save — but he really can’t.”
With
extensive
research
into
Williams’s
life,
Vinogradov
grew
to
understand the playwright’s
lasting impact.
“Williams
made
the
memory play. I think what a
lot of it has to do with is what
we choose to remember,”
Vinogradov
said.
“In
his
blackouts
due
to
alcohol,
he has lost all these good
memories, and the things that
withstood were traumas that
were just too great to be deleted.
They persisted and the question
is: Is that a choice?”
Through the making of this
piece, Vinogradov grappled with
questions of what we choose to
remember. Vinogradov found
that the more he thought about
these questions, the more they
emerged
through
Williams’s
memoirs.
“Marlon Brando, for example,
was just recently discovered to
have raped a woman on set,”
Vinogradov said. “This icon for
so many of us just instantly fell
to ashes. At first I kind of wrote
him as a monster. And then I
had to come to terms with that
being a little too easy.”
In
understanding
human
flaws that can’t be removed
from
remaking
a
memory,
Vinogradov creates the depth
that his characters demand.
“How do you make him
complicated without forgiving
him? The way we kind of
learned that … the person who
hates him more than anyone
else is himself. That was a really
delicate thing to dance around,”
Vinogradov said.
While discussing character
relationships, and sharing about
what each actor has brought
to each role, Vinogradov found
that
the
actors
discovered
elements of the script that he
wasn’t
even
aware
existed.
Through these elements, two
main themes rest at the heart of
Vinogradov’s script.
“The first is the idea that for
something to really be beautiful,
it
needs
to
have
ugliness.
Beauty is a direct perspective of
something else we are looking
at. In order for you to have
lived a beautiful life and a good
life, you have to recognize the
ugly things that happened,”
Vinogradov said. “The other
thing that really impacted me
is the idea that you are not what
you’ve done, but what you do.
You can become the person you
want to be.”
Despite the rather tragic
events
that
unfold
in
the
play, the audience is left with
an
overwhelming
sense
of
optimism.
“When you are put in the
midst of such horrible things
— we as human beings are
awesome. We are going to find
things to grasp onto and love.”
BAILEY KADIAN
Daily Arts Writer
“A Night of Stars
with Tennessee
Williams”
Slipstream
Theatre Initiative
September 7th -
10th
September 14th
- 17th
$12
6A — Tuesday, September 5, 2017
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com