Connect with us

Arts & Entertainment

Heartland inspiration

Idaho-born playwright finds middle America ripe for exploration

Published

on

‘A Bright New Boise’
Through Nov. 6
Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company
641 D Street, NW
$20-$67.50
202-393-3939

From left, Joshua Morgan, Emily Townley, Felipe Cabezas, Michael Russotto and Kimberly Gilbert in ‘A Bright New Boise’ by Samuel D. Hunter. (Photo by Stan Barouh; courtesy Woolly Mammoth Theatre)

For up-and-coming gay playwright Samuel D. Hunter, Idaho is an outsized source of inspiration.

“I’m originally from Idaho, and most of my plays are set there,” he says. “It’s a sort of canvas for me. Typically I like to use places and things I know as a jumping off point to explore things I’m not quite so sure about.”

Hunter’s best known play, “A Bright New Boise” for which he won a 2011 Obie Award (the off-Broadway Tony) for playwriting, is running at Woolly Mammoth and is the first of his plays to be produced in D.C. Set in the break room at a big box craft store called Hobby Lobby, “Boise” is a dark comedy whose central character is obsessed with the rapture.

“I’m very interested in people who want the world to end,” says Hunter, 30. “They’re so hard to figure out. But the play is about a lot more than the rapture. The spine of the story is the reunion of a father and his long lost son. It’s a human story that’s pretty universal.”

In recent weeks, Manhattan-based Hunter has been in D.C. completing rewrites and spending extra time with his partner John Baker, Woolly’s literary manager. Thus far, Hunter reports positively about the quality of the production (staged by gay director John Vreeke and featuring, among others, gay actors Michael Russotto and Joshua Morgan as the father and son, respectively).

Hunter’s characters aren’t particularly glamorous: They hold menial jobs, profess fundamentalist beliefs and are in many ways similar to a lot of Americans. “I like to write about folks who aren’t typically written about. Do we really need another play about rich white people getting divorced? Granted there are some good plays on the subject, but there’s so much more to put on our stages.”

Growing up in smallish Moscow, Idaho, Hunter (who goes by Sam) attended a Christian day school and worked part time at Wal-Mart. After high school, he attended New York University where he majored in dramatic writing and minored in Middle Eastern Studies. Later, he received an master’s degree from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop. Since then, he’s taught at Fordham University, as well as in the Occupied Palestinian Territories at Ashtar Theater (Ramallah) and Ayyam al-Masrah (Hebron). But mostly he writes plays.

Winning the Obie Award was definitely a turning point in Hunter’s increasingly busy career. “It’s not like I won an Oscar, but yes, it lifted my career. It used to be there were all the fancy people and then there’s me. After winning I began to feel like a member of the club. I finally believed it was possible for me to sustain a career in theater.”

And now as a hot emerging playwright with a progressively more demanding schedule, Hunter has had to give up the regular teaching gig. In addition to “Boise’s” D.C. run, Hunter soon has other plays opening at the Denver Center, and, yes, the Boise Contemporary Theater. Sounding almost entirely convinced, he says, “I have my life figured out for the next year and a half, and I’m pretty certain I can survive on what I earn as a playwright. Considering the economy, I think that’s pretty good.”

And what’s Hunter writing about now?

“A lot of my past plays involve dull jobs and parking lots. Currently I’m working on a play about the Home Shopping Network and the culture of all that. I enjoy exploring boring things. If I still lived in Idaho, I’d probably be writing about New York City.”

 

Advertisement
FUND LGBTQ JOURNALISM
SIGN UP FOR E-BLAST

Movies

A cat and its comrades ride to adventure in breathtaking ‘Flow’

Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis directs animated fantasy adventure

Published

on

(Image courtesy of Janus Films)

Sometimes, life changes overnight, and there’s nothing to do but be swept away by it, trying to navigate its currents with nothing to help you but sheer instinct and the will to survive.

Sound familiar? It should; most lives are at some point met with the challenge of facing a new personal reality when the old one unexpectedly ceases to exist. Losing a job, a home, a relationship: any of these experiences require us to adapt, often on the fly; well-laid plans fall by the wayside and the only thing that matters is surviving to meet a new challenge tomorrow.

When such catastrophes are communal, national, or even global, the stability of existence can be erased so completely that adaptation feels nearly impossible; the “hits” just keep on coming, and we’re left reeling in a constant state of panicked uncertainty. That might sound familiar, too.

If so, you likely realize that there’s little comfort to be found in most of the entertainments we seek for distraction, outside of the temporary respite provided by thinking about something else for a while — but there are some entertainments that can work on us in a deeper way, too, and perhaps provide us with something that feels like hope, even when we know there is no chance of returning to the world we once knew.

“Flow” is just such an entertainment.

Directed by Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis from a screenplay co-written with Matīss Kaža, this independently-produced, five-and-a-half-year-in-the-making animated fantasy adventure has become one of the most acclaimed films of 2024; debuting at Cannes in the non-competitive “Un Certain Regard” section, it won raves from international reviewers and went on to claim yearly “best of” honors from numerous critics’ organizations and film award bodies, including the Golden Globes and the National Board of Review. Now nominated not only for the Academy’s Best Animated Feature award but as Best International Feature (only the third animated movie to accomplish that feat) as well, it stands as the odds-on favorite to take home at least one of those Oscars, and possibly even both — and once seen, it’s hard to dissent from that assessment.

Set in an unspecified time and an unknown, richly forested place, it centers its narrative — which begins with breathtaking quickness, almost from the opening frames of the film — on a small-ish charcoal grey cat, who wakes from its slumber to find its home rapidly disappearing under a rising tide of water. Trying to stay ahead of the flood, it finds a lifeline when it discovers an abandoned sailboat, adrift on the waves, and seeks safety on board; but the cat is not the only refugee here, and with an unlikely group of other animals — a dog, a capybara, a lemur, and a secretary bird — sharing the ride, the plucky feline must forge alliances with (and between) each of its shipmates if any of them are to avoid a seemingly apocalyptic fate. Faced with setbacks and challenges at every turn, the crew of unlikely comrades learns to cooperate out of shared necessity — but will it be enough to keep the uncontrollable waters that surround them from becoming their final oblivion?

With no human presence in the movie — though the implication that it once existed, accompanied by the inevitable suspicion that climate change is behind the mysterious flood, is ominously delivered through the monumental ruined structures and broken relics it has seemingly left behind — the story unfolds without a word of dialogue, a narrative chain of events that keeps us ever-focused on the “now.” The non-verbal vocalizations of its characters (each provided by authentic animal sounds rather than human impersonation) help to convey their relationships with clarity, but it’s the visual evocation of their sensory experiences — of being trapped and at the mercy of the elements, of making an unexpected connection with another being, of enjoying a simple pleasure like a soft place to sleep — that fuels this remarkable exploration of physical existence at its most raw and vulnerable. We have no way of knowing what has happened, no way of imagining what is yet to come, but such questions fade quickly into irrelevance as the story carries our attention from the immediacy of one moment into the next.

Accentuating this in-the-moment flow of “Flow”— for if ever a film title could be said to summarize its style, it is surely this one — is its eye-absorbing visual beauty, rendered via the open-sourced software Blender to provide an aesthetic which matches the material. These realistically-drawn animals come vividly to life against a backdrop that captures a deep connection to nature, accented with the surreal intrusions of human influence and a certain appreciation for the colorful beauty of the world around us, even at its most untamed, which hints at an indefinable mysticism; and when the story begins to transcend the expected borders of its meticulously-crafted realism, the animation takes us there so easily that we scarcely notice it has happened.

Yet transcend it does, and in so doing becomes something greater than a humble adventure tale. As the animal companions progress in their journey toward hoped-for safety, the remnants of human existence become more weathered, more ancient, and less recognizable; the natural landscape through which they are carried begins to be transformed, rendered in a more mythic light by the clash of elemental forces swirling around them and the strange encounters with other creatures that occur along their way. Whatever world this may have been, it seems rapidly to be dissolving into a cosmos where the forms of the past are being reconfigured into something new — and the band of travelers, both witness to and participants in this process, cannot help but be reconfigured, too.

We can’t explain that further without spoilers, but we can tell you that it includes the cat’s ability to ignore its solitary instincts and natural mistrust of its comrades in order to form a diverse (yes, we said it) and cooperative team. It also involves learning to let go of things that can no longer help, to be open to new possibilities that might, and perhaps most importantly, to surrender without fear to the “flow” and trust that it will eventually take you where you need to go, as long as you can manage to stay afloat until you get there.

Zilbalodis’s film is an immersive ride, full of visceral and frequently harrowing moments that may produce some anxiety (especially for those who hate seeing animals in peril) and conceptual shifts that may challenge your expectations — but it is a ride well worth taking. More than merely a fantastical “Noah’s Ark” fable reimagined for an environmentally conscious age, it just might offer the timely catharsis many of us need to confront our unknowable future with a renewed sense of possibility.
“Flow” begins streaming on Max on Feb. 14.

Continue Reading

Out & About

Celebrate Aquarius season with drag

SADBrunch holds event at Throw Social

Published

on

Cake Pop! hosts the brunch at Throw Social on Sunday. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

SADBrunch will host “Drag Brunch” on Sunday, Feb. 16 at 12 p.m. at Throw Social.

Grab your friends & family, your mimosa, a plate full of food, and join us for Drag Brunch. Five flocking fabulous queens take to the stage to perform in this sassy, extravagant, fantabulous event. Tickets start at $25 and are available on Eventbrite

Continue Reading

Out & About

Being single doesn’t mean you have to be alone this Valentine’s Day!

Casa De LGBT hosts speed dating event

Published

on

(Image by kotoffei/Bigstock)

Casa De LGBT will host “Gay, DL, Transgender Speed Dating” on Friday, Feb. 14 at 8:00p.m. at 1406 N. Capitol St. NW. 

This will be a night of speed dating, deep connections, and good vibes! Whether you’re gay, lesbian, transgender, or queer, this event is designed to bring people together in a safe, respectful, and welcoming environment Come ready to connect, have fun, and maybe even meet someone special. Tickets cost $30 and can be purchased on Eventbrite.

Continue Reading
Advertisement
Advertisement

Sign Up for Weekly E-Blast

Follow Us @washblade

Advertisement

Popular