Student Production Tackles 'Getting Out'

“When we are loved we are afraid / love will vanish / when we are alone we are afraid / love will never return,” reads a piece of the poem “The Black Unicorn” by Audre Lorde, included in the program for the Hepburn Zoo production of Marsha Norman's Getting Out.

Getting Out, which ran Nov. 6-8, marked the first student theatre production of the semester. Under the direction of Rebecca Coates-Finke ’16.5, the play explored the ever-present fear of not having something – whether it is love or freedom or food, whether because of losing it or never getting it back – through the journey of a woman named Arlene who has just been released from prison and returns to her home in Kentucky to restart her life.

Coates-Finke first got the idea to direct her own production last spring in her Directing I class, when Aashna Aggarwal ’16 – who plays Arlene – approached her about collaborating on a project. Coates-Finke, who had been reading plays in preparation for Playwriting I, found Getting Out while looking at a series of plays by Marsha Norman and instantly connected with the subject matter and the format through which the play addresses it.

“There’s a lot of different layers to the play that drew me in,” Coates-Finke said. “It is about [a girl] trying to shed her past and move on to a new life. And the impossibility of doing that. [It’s about] how much ‘getting out’ is not a reality of the world.”

Getting Out presents the difficult task of shedding one’s past by putting Arlene’s former self – called Arlie and played with engaging tenacity and unwavering energy by Sarah Karerat ’18 – onstage with Arlene for almost every moment of the dramatic action.

Maggie Cochrane ’16’s smart stage design, which countered Arlene’s apartment on the left side of the stage with an open, transformable black space on the right, confined Arlene into the reality of her tiny apartment while allowing Arlie’s presence to spread into every dimension of the space as she moved back in forth through time.

After some discussion with Coates-Finke about which version of the protagonist Aggarwal would play, Aggarwal decided to take on the challenge of grounding herself in the post-prison Arlene, a woman with the same history and inherent hard edge as Arlie, but with a different way of handling these parts of herself. Aggarwal’s impressive restraint and subtle use of the triggers and reactive instincts Karerat instilled into Arlie created a strong contrast between the two leads that invited the audience to participate in finding Arlie in her current self, rather than spelling the similarities out for them. Coates-Finke and both actresses acknowledged the links in the text between Arlie and Arlene – present in overlapping conversations about their weight or their father and in each woman’s use of props such as lighters and food items – without making them obvious or forced.

To incorporate the pieces of Arlie that motivate Arlene, and also distinguish her as a new woman, Aggarwal tracked Arlie’s feelings and reactions in each scene and used them to explain how and why Arlene does what she does. While Arlene’s old self is not gone, Aggarwal realized that she has to establish a new approach to the same problems.

“Arlie came up with a way to deal with the world, and that’s not going to work for Arlene,” Aggarwal said.

The play, in part, follows Arlene’s progression towards finding the way of life that will work for her. Initially, her aggression leads her to proclaim, “I ain’t Arlie. Arlie could have killed you,” but her emotions evolve to allow a quiet yet powerful call for help asking her neighbor Ruby to stay and protect her from Carl, a former friend who tries to tempt her into resorting to her past actions to live more comfortably. John Cheesman ’16’s believable portrayal of Carl’s aggression and self-confidence in his life choices makes Arlene’s decision harder and more significant than it could be without the development of such high stakes by both actors.

Despite the length of the loudspeaker announcements, which opened each act and verged on too long to hold the audience’s interest, the moments of humor in these announcements and in supporting characters were much appreciated and prevented the play from becoming one-note in its message. A stand out in this respect, Eliza Renner ’18 delivered her lines as the mother with impeccable comedic timing while matching her blunt humor with pointed gravity when necessary.

Quincy Simmons ’18’s one-liners as friendly neighbor Ruby in the second half of the show revived what the dreary plants brought by prison guard/friend/attempted rapist Bennie – played with an effective combination of unsettling ease and rare moments of eagerness by Jabari Matthew ’17 – could not, brightening both Arlene’s situation and the audience’s hope. Simmons’ gentle yet matter-of-fact delivery of self-advice such as, “Ruby, if that gallon of milk can bounce back, so can you” and resonating truths like, “Arlene’s had about as much help as she can stand,” show that verbal punches can be just as powerful as physical ones.

While the text itself felt repetitive in its intentions at times, Coates-Finke’s dynamic blocking – especially in playing with Arlie’s untamed energy when she is forced into confinement – and adeptness at setting up rewarding moments prevented the play from dragging and brought the audience along to the final conflict.

Arlene’s ultimate question is how to surpass her old ways without giving up the luxury – or at least relative luxury – that she had gotten used to. She sees Ruby’s life of cooking all night and playing cards all day as equally stifling to her time in jail, and yet she wants to provide her son with a present, positive mother figure, something she cannot do if she returns to prostitution and crime. She has received an opportunity to start over, and yet the reality of the freedom of a woman just released from jail does not provide an easy, or even recognizable, way to get out from under the oppression she has experienced. She is afraid of losing the progress she has made if she goes with Carl, and she is afraid of losing her freedom if she stays. It is her recognition of the inevitability of fearing the road not taken that allows her to take her first tangible step in one direction at the end of the play, bringing her out of the unknown if nothing else.