Review: In This House (Everything Is You) at FronteraFest [theater]

By Michael Meigs
In This House is a collaboration between the Salvage Vanguard Theatre, FronteraFest 2010 and a dozen artists and writers. It's held at a tidy little bed & breakfast on Garden Street. About fifteen minutes before start time (not "curtain time", because the show takes place in situ, in various locations on the ground floor and back yard of the Eponymous Garden), a handful of shadowy figures were standing around in the front yard. Jenny Larson of the SVT was dispensing tickets with a cheerful smile, along with a single-sheet program and a postcard about the show she's directing at the SVT in February, C. Denby Swanson's An Extraordinary Narrative of the Birth of Rabbits. "We'll be on the ground floor of the house and out in the backyard. You'll stay on the back porch. If you need to use the restroom, we can escort you before the show."

Co-director Dustin Wills of Tutto sat nearby, looking relaxed. Graham Schmidt from Breakin' String productions showed up. "What is this production about?" (Well might he ask -- the blurb from FronteraFest is mysterious: "We are thinking of a lost child. We are thinking of the past poking up into the present and giving you a chill. We are thinking about the present reaching back into the past, and giving it a loving hug.")

Jenny and Dustin were nice about it, but they weren't giving anything away, and the program sheet was even less helpful than the blurb. It listed "artists," fourteen of them, without identifying them further. No designation of "writer" or "director" or "actor" or "technical advisor." One could guess at some of them: Shannon Bridgeforth writes and directs; Cyndi Williams writes, acts and does admin work at Austin Playhouse; Jude Hickey, a member of the DA! collective, has appeared on stage all over town.

Jenny brought the audience members into the serene, high-ceilinged front parlor and connected dining room of the Eponymous Garden B&B. They settled in seats around the edges of that space while a child pounded and pounded on the keyboard of a baby grand piano. A young woman dressed in black stood silent in a doorway; two small children in black clothing, never identified in the stories, climbed around the piano; Cyndi Williams was a mother figure. Slim, intense Adriene Mishler played a young woman, and Hickey played her brother.

Over the following 55 minutes scenes unfolded there, in the kitchen, in the yard and in the porch, taking spectators in unexpected, sometimes unexplained jumps through the history of this family. Time shifted in the course of some scenes - in a whisk and whisper Mishler and Hickey went from exuberant young children to grownups and, minutes later, back again. In the kitchen, as a young married man, Hickey read aloud from the newspaper about the search for the Lindberg kidnapper and about Amelia Earhart, events from the mid-1930s. He commented to a busy and worried Florinda Bryant, who played his wife, and to young Wesley Bryant, as their son. The shed in the backyard appeared and disappeared for the characters according to chronology. Mom told a fantastical story about river flooding and about finding catfish in the yard for days afterward.

In This House (Everything Is You) is collaborative creation, not a ghost story, but in fact a memory story ranging across the years, a touching narrative in non-linear time. Mind you, there is a ghost - Jamie Rhodes as that silent young woman in black who follows the action around. But except for the wild stories of the young brother and sister, we never really get around to her story.

The story of the house and the family never really ended. Instead, back in the living room, Mishler remembered and grieved over a collection of ancient snapshots, then rose and left the room. The audience waited. The seconds stretched out. Lights in the other rooms went out. The audience was left with memories, new-minted. Eventually, Jenny came to lead them out the front door, where the cast was waiting to greet them.

[additional credits: Daniel Alexander, Sharon Bridgforth, Cyndi Williams, Monika Bustamante, and Dustin Wills wrote scripts and the actors also devised scripted scenes during the 8 day rehearsal process. Louie Rhodes and Renna Larson were the unidentified small children. Pamela Friday did costumes.]

Michael Meigs is a theatre journalist. His website AustinLiveTheatre.com carries announcements of Austin's upcoming theatre events, provides a comprehensive calendar of performances and offers reviews of local theatre.