‘Umbrellas’ Get Absurdist

“The Secret Lives of Umbrellas” has nothing to do with umbrellas. Nor does it deal with secret lives either. But the absurdist qualities of this original play by Jessica S. Benjamin ’07 were what caught the attention of director Dipika Guha during a read-through of the script in their playwriting class.

Before last semester, Benjamin had never written or produced a play, and her only experience as an actor was in a sixth grade production of “Hamlet.” But when assigned to write a play as a final project in her creative writing course, Benjamin embraced the challenge.

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

“The Secret Lives of Umbrellas” consists of a series of scenes loosely linked by the play’s characters. Instead of a plot, Benjamin relies on language to drive the piece.

“I do like words and the manipulation of words, and I like how they sound when bumped up against each other in strange permutations,” Benjamin says.

Though Benjamin is hesitant to label the play as absurdist, she acknowledges the fact that jarring and surreal threads run throughout the script. However, she never intended to take the play in such a direction.

“I started off writing something that was a little more traditional, had more of a definite plot and story arc, and I got about five pages into it and then I realized that I wasn’t necessarily being true to what I enjoyed writing the most,” she says.

Benjamin began experimenting with new avenues of writing and eventually realized that each of her seemingly unrelated scenes were populated by the same characters.

ACTION AND REACTION

When Guha, a student at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, heard Benjamin read her scenes in class, she was impressed by the fact that Benjamin “had broken all the rules she had set up for herself in the previous scene” and approached Benjamin about directing the play.

Drawing on previous experience with absurdist theater from work in theater and BBC radio dramas, Guha began to piece the production together.

“The way we approached it was to not to make any decisions about how we wanted things to play at all,” Guha says. “Right from the beginning, we’ve taken it one step at a time. Seeing how the actors responded. Seeing how our set person responded to the script.”

Benjamin explains that the experience of casting the show was appropriately unique. While some actors came from the Common Casting process, some were drawn from other sources.

Alasdair R. Wilkins ’10 heard about the show through his participation in an improvisational troupe, the Immediate Gratification Players.

Like Guha, Wilkins was drawn to Benjamin’s monologues, which “are just awesome to say.”

Reflecting on some of his own dialogue, Wilkins puts it this way: “You don’t get to say that usually, at least not without getting funny looks.”

Though feeling the pressure associated with the week before opening night, Benjamin says she is pleased with what the cast and crew have accomplished.

“I’m excited about the production because, at the very least, it’s just something a little different and a little more unconventional, and I think that’s good for people to see,” says Benjamin. “It’s also exciting to see something to go from the page to the stage, but also a little terrifying too.”

“The Secret Lives of Umbrellas” will open in the Adams House Pool Theater today, March 16th.