A Bawdy Tale Opens Tonight!

After a hilarious preview stint at The Woods last week, "A Bawdy Tale" opens proper at Curious Comedy tonight! Don't miss this PAC-infused confection, written and directed by longtime faculty member Connor Kerns and featureing an all-PAC alumni or current student cast: Nicole Yoba, Juliana Wheeler, Natasha Terranova, Scott Rogers, Tom Mounsey, Spencer Conway (hey, he just won a Drammy!) and Rob Ciardi.

 

From the Montgomery Street Players' web site:

A Bawdy Tale is inspired by the poetry of John Skelton, and tells the story of young twenty-somethings sent to die at an island resort because they have contracted a rampant disease to which older people are inexplicably immune. The resort’s immune bartender serves the drinks while the dying youth deal with their impending demise by seemingly not dealing with it at all. They choose to drink and screw their way to happiness as they wrestle with how to make their final exits.

 

 

Buy tickets here! But not before whetting your whistle with some words from Mr. Kerns in conversation with Conservatory Confessions:

Conservatory Confessions: If you had to choose one line from 'A Bawdy Tale' that sums up the experience, Connor, what would it be?

Connor Kerns: Sarah: “I want to make-believe. That’s the play I think we really want. I want to remember I’m alive.”

Conservatory Confessions: Tell us a little bit about the premise.

 



Connor Kerns

 Connor Kerns: If you were going to die of a disease within the next few months and you were in hospice, what would you do? Pain medication, expenses, social contact are not a problem. Very few rules are enforced. Like in a college dormitory, you are surrounded with other people your age and there’s a party every night at the bar. Would you grapple with issues of mortality or would you try and forget? Do you feel lust or love, anger or horror? How would you live when you’re about to die?

 

"A Bawdy Tale," then, is about three young couples suffering from an unnamed terminal disease and how they deal with their last days while quarantined on an island with a bartender/hospice worker. It is inspired by 15th century poet John Skelton's harum-scarum wit and dark sense of humor. I sought to combine those qualities with spare, gritty realism. What I tried to create, in short, is:

• a dirty, pretty play
• a dark comedy with make-believe: ghosts and sword-fighting
• some poetry, and a little sex

Conservatory Confessions: What does the play mean and how do you project that to the audience?

Connor Kerns: Superbugs, SARS, AIDS, Black Plague—whether from history or the present, the play explores pandemics and how they affect those who can’t pay for treatment. We are facing overpopulation and global cross-contamination that could easily separate the haves from the have nots. This gives audiences a chance to re-evaluate the peril of being lower middle class in a decaying society.

 

Conservatory Confessions: Why did you want to do this play?

 

Producer #1

Connor Kerns: The producers, Scott and Tom, said this when selecting the play for their company’s second production:

"We think that A Bawdy Tale is the kind of thing that Montgomery Street needs."

I think this is because it seems more raw, less concrete, and more challenging a play to produce. It seems like it would require some kind of development process to figure it all out, which is more exciting to us.

 

Conservatory Confessions: What do Skelton's images say to an audience today, right now, in this particular time and place?

 

Producer #2, on the left, in the dress

Connor Kerns: I studied Skelton (1460-1529) in British Literature in college. His poetry is like no one else’s, and I never forgot it. I came across his poem "The Tunning of Elinor Rumming" some years ago, and the idea for writing "A Bawdy Tale" emerged from it. Here is a bit of Skelton’s rollicking verse describing Elinor and the folks who visit her pub:

 

“Tell you I chill

 If that ye will

 A while be still,

 Of a comely jill

 That dwelt on a hill . . .

 Such lewd sort

 To Elinor resort

 From tide to tide:

 Abide, abide,

 And to you shall be told

 How her ale is sold . . .”

 

I envisioned a contemporary version of Skelton’s pub. Instead of the bubonic plague, I imagined a modern day disease that has confined the infected to a blasted island. The island pub would be the place the characters would come to fight, dance, drink and maybe forget their cares.

 

Check out "A Bawdy Tale" running Thursday through Saturday, September 16 through September 25 at 8pm. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door at Curious Comedy Theater.