Mostly bright half life

Review

Tanya Barfield’s Bright Half Life is a daring undertaking: to tell the story of an interracial queer relationship in a nonlinear fashion. The play is made up of bursts of action from a life-long entanglement between two women--Erica and Vicky. The moments are all scrambled together skipping forwards and backwards in time. One moment the women are riding in an elevator, slumped with age and the emotional weight of a medical diagnosis; the next moment they are in a corporate work office as young employee acquaintances; and the next moment they are fighting over their kids’ homework assignments.

Gradually the puzzle pieces of their lives fall into place, and my experience of being an audience member at the Pillsbury House Theatre’s current production felt at first like jarring detective work and then a strange meditation on the nature of time shared with a lover.

How is a relationship experienced through time?  How is time experienced through a relationship? These questions were by far the most compelling aspect of this piece. In one transition Erica and Vicky are passionately kissing and then suddenly passionately fighting (perhaps breaking up) years in the future. Both moments are on the same bed, and the contrast between them is heartbreaking.

Time in two ways

This heartbreak did not come from a narrative arch that slowly and inevitably led to loss and sorrow. It was the unique agony of breaking up with a lover but at the same time knowing that those arms once caressed you on the exact same bed. Each moment in time with a lover can be experienced in at least two ways: an eternity that stands alone forever (you are always just falling in love) and a pin drop on a relentless crash into the future (you will never be falling in love for the first time with that person again).

Another consequence of this time collage is that the habits and proclivities of Erica and Vicky are illuminated quickly. Instead of slowly becoming acquainted with Vicky’s tendency to micromanage Erica, we are exposed to fragments of Vicky training Erica into a temp office job, Vicky advising (now girlfriend) Erica to go into a textbook writing career, and (now middle age) Erica breaking up with Vicky in part because of Vicky’s tendency to dictate her life.

In this manner, Barfield treats time more like we experience it in memories. A memory of skydiving can spark a memory of a ferris-wheel ride and every other time you were high off the ground. A memory of fighting can spark a memory of every time you were passionately angry with a person. Habitual and repeated actions cement memories. Through this script they create character development in a refreshing style.

Clearly, I was compelled by Barfield’s experiment. It is a daring beast of a script tackled admirably by Ellen Fenster’s direction and actors Sarah Agnew (Erica) and Jasmine Houghes (Vicky) who barely get to take a breath during this whirlwind of flashing interactions. The fact that this story is told through live theater (instead of the technically more suitable jump-cuts of film) allowed the effect, of always living in the future present and past at the same time, to resound more deeply. Having actors do the intense work of making split-second transitions between completely different times and emotions intensified the feeling that all of these moments were eternally layered over each other, instead of simply being flash backs or flash forwards.

Left hanging

However, ultimately this production didn’t fully work for me.  The chemistry between Erica and Vicky was practically non-existent. Whether this was because of the scrambled nature of the script (absolutely no time to ease into and build emotion), the direction, or the acting was unclear, but I left feeling utterly unconvinced by the sexual relationship of these women. This hurt the production intensely, because in a world without linear narrative and in a relationship heavy with identity politics, the play had to depend on the once mighty love of these two characters--a magnetism that seemed all but absent.

At the same time, the script was masterfully crafted, but its content felt shallow. This form of story telling is so complicated and technically demanding that it left little room for content. Difficult and meaty topics were addressed but then left hanging.

Erica makes ignorant remarks stemming from her white privilege (such as equating racial oppression with gay oppression). Vicky calls her out, but this tension never develops. Vicky expresses discomfort with claiming a queer identity where as Erica loudly announces her gayness, but this contrast is never reengaged. The script gave us a full wide overview of these women’s lives and love story, but the nuances of conflict were sacrificed. Ultimately this left me feeling frustrated rather than invested.

I applaud Barfield’s daring experiment in story telling. Joseph Stanley’s striking minimalist stage design, Katharine Horowitz’s sharp sound transitions to mark the jumps in time, and Wu Chen Khoo’s dreamy understated lighting design all worked beautifully to support this strange time travel. Agnew and Hughes performed with a stamina and inertia that deserves acclaim.

Without a deeper story to tell, and a deeper romantic connection, however, I left the theater wondering why I should care.

 

Headshot of Zoe Michael
Zoe Michael

Zoe Michael loves creating, participating and supporting productions of all kinds, including theater, dance, puppetry, drag, and strange mixtures of all of these. Originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico, Zoe has found her home in the Twin Cities where she works as a director, actor, baker and waitress.