Gruesome Playground Injuries by Rajiv Joseph

Hope Luna

 

 

By Joe Straw 

A moment is like a shooting star.  If you catch it, it opens the imaginative world of creativity.                 

 

The one thing that justifies an objective in any play is love.  Love, love, love, love and love. Nothing comes close to love.  Love is the thing that gives an actor an objective, a purpose, and that objective is made up of multiple actions that moves the character to their destination. Love comes, and it comes in many forms.

 

Gruesome Playground Injuries by Rajiv Joseph, director by Anna Moskowitz, produced by Drew Woodruff and Andrew Simon, and Executive Produced by Zoe Brown, had a limited 4-performance run at 905 Cole Avenue in Hollywood, California.

 

Kayleen and Doug are eight when they meet.  Possibly a chance meeting in a nurse’s office, possibly not, she with an upset stomach and he with a broken face after riding his bike off the roof of a Catholic school.   Sitting on a couple of cots Kayleen mysteriously says, “There’s an angel on the roof” to which Doug says, “No there’s not.”

 

Thus, a relationship is born, something they will remember the rest of their lives and without thinking about it, a moment that will play an important part in their being. Time is not linear in this play; the moments are a reflection moving back and forth until they reach the age of 38. So, one may suspect the reflections of their lives culminate to the ultimate meeting, however that manifests itself, in their last encounter.

 

There’s a reason a little boy rides his bike off the roof and that is because he wants to impress someone and, in this case, it is a little girl. Relationship don’t always work out like the participants want.  But there is that connection, one of healing, and one of longing, and if someone would only give in to the moment, we might have something.  But they never do, maybe they do, but conflict gets in their way and, they’re too young to know they need each other.  

 

They meet again at 23 years old after Doug’s horrific accident.  Kayleen is there to comfort him, but he crosses the line, her line, for the sake of his pain. She has had too much pain recently and there’s just one more thing to do, one more bridge to cross, one more muddy road to travel, knowing she must get to his side.

 

They encounter each other at the age of 13, an eight-grade dance.  Doug dances into the room.  He has hurt his foot. Kayleen has an upset stomach and Doug wants to help.  He even offers her ginger ale. But even in this situation, there is no meeting of the minds, and Doug tries to physically dance with her to no avail, and then kiss her, no chance but there is that thing of staying in the room next to someone who may be the one, despite being thirteen and all.

 

When Kayleen finally makes a connection at the age of 28, Kayleen throws her heart out to Doug who lies there, in a coma, without the ability to connect. But she is there, his angel, if only he could move and speak, no matter, Doug is listening, and he’ll take whatever makes him feel better and reflect upon it later.  

 

One can listen to Rajiv Joseph’s words and come up will a million possibilities, or ways, the material can manifest itself in this play first produced in 2009 at the Alley Theatre in Houston, Texas.  Reflection moves one in a way that time is not linear and important matters are accentuated when thinking about the how you came to be, why you are, and who you are now. The play starts at age 8 and moves back and forth until it ends at age 38. Gruesome Playground Injuries is a brilliant one-act play, with the bitterest of contradictions, and ambiguous enough to give many interpretations to the same play with various directors.

 

Anna Moskowitz, the director, has placed her stamp on the play giving us a very likeable and engaging production given the offbeat location of the performance area. One likens it to a once used editing room of an independent film production company now used as Anthony Meindl’s Actors Workshop and this may be a perfect location for that purpose.  But now, on this night, it is used for a performance space, 43 people enclosed on either size of a long tube-like performance area with the audience on either end of the playing area (stage) and one exit door and that lends itself to some logistic problems of viewing the play. In the moments that mattered, that moved the play forward, seen reactions were blocked.  For example, Kayleen taking the stones out of Doug’s hands and seeing his reaction at his angel.  Also, at times the actors were so far apart that one was moving the head back and forth as though it were a tennis match.  This is a very intimate production, that needed the actors to be center stage and mixing it up especially when moments mattered the most. How intimate can you be when the characters want to be so far from each other is the engaging trick of the play. Also, changing clothes during play presented other problems and requires a little more creativity to keep the audience engaged in their lives during those changes.   Still, it was a very enjoyable night at the theatre.

 

How weird was it that Hope Luna’s character was listed as “Doug” on the program that was scanned via QR Code. One set of someone’s tired eyes. (I get it.)

 

Hope Luna nails the first scene as an eight-year-old student with very expressive eyes and is engaging throughout. There are multiple things in Kayleen’s backstory that plays an important part in creating a fully rounded character.  One is the abandonment of her mother, the other is the non-existent relationship she has with her father who, she still lives with and, who thinks her mother was a better person than she will ever be. Certainly, it plays a part of her not understanding how anyone can love her no matter how much they profess their love.

 

Andrew Simon

 

 

Andrew Simon does well as Doug. Doug does his best to show his love despite not being able find a way to fully engage in a manner that captures her spirit. Every gruesome thing he does is for the capture of his love is lost in something he can’t really grasp. His reactions to winning her love is offbeat (the fireworks), or violence, or saving the angel that she once loved. How many ways do you have to show you love someone before they finally believe you? For Simon to find the levels of engagements requires a deeper level of emotional commitment, one that says you’ve love so much until you can’t give it any longer.  At times one question the choices Simon made, one being the vigorous dancing scene when he has a bad foot.  Each level of injury seems to be for the benefit of engaging with his love and that didn’t really happen in this version of the play. Despite that, Simon is a very creative actor showing flashing of brilliance and has a very strong stage presence. Simon also served as a producer.

 

The only thing resembling a set is the elementary posters on the wall that may have symbolized the place where the characters met.

 

Laura Gonzalez created the character’s look as the Costume Designer and that was effective from age eight to thirty-eight.

 

Low level lighting by Alicia Esparza, Lighting Designer, did not accentuate the cutting marks on Kayleen’s legs and that would have help moved the story along tremendously.  

 

Other members of the crew are as follows:

 

Chelsea M Matthews – Executive Producer

Robin Schultz – Venue Manager

Emily Vanni – Production Assistant

Ally Lardner – Stage & Production Manager

Aubrey Salita – Assistant Director

Spencer Drees – Creative Consultant

Glenn Schuster – Sound Designer

Felicia Cantu – Assistant Stage Manager

 

This show has closed.