Preview

"Wings" takes flight at OTP Studio Theatre

By MIKE NORTON
Record-Eagle staff writer

TRAVERSE CITY - By its very nature, a crippling stroke. can make it almost impossible for a man or woman to communicate effectively with the outside world.

How, then, can this heartbreaking isolation - this stew of suppressed and thwarted thoughts - be communicated to a theater audience?

It isn't easy. But that's the task playwright Arthur Kopit set for himself in the 1979 drama "Wings," which opens Oct. 11 for a three-week run at the Old Town Playhouse Studio Theatre. And director Al Lien was so daunted by the task that he took the show's entire nine-member cast to a September meeting of the Grand Traverse Bay Stroke Club to meet stroke victims and their families.
"My mother had a stroke, so I know a little about it," said Lien. "You can sit there and describe it to someone all day long, but until you see the look on a person's face when they know they're saying the wrong word but they can't make themselves speak the right word, you're not going to understand."
"Wings"  tells the story of a former aerial stuntwoman named Emily Stilson who suffers a stroke in her 70s that robs her of her ability to speak
and to understand the words other people speak to her. Gradually, she is helped by a persistent speech therapist to recognize, reflect upon, and finally, to use the magic of the spoken word.
Kopit, whose other works include "Indians," "Nine" and "Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad," wrote "Wings" after his own father was successfully rehabilitated from a major stroke. Inspired by the people he encountered during the course of his father's treatment, he created the character of Emily - using her former career as an performing wing- walker as one of many extended metaphors for the way language lifts human existence to a new level.
 "Wings" was originally written as a radio play for National Public Radio, and it remains a difficult drama to present on stage, Lien has worked with Playhouse technical guru Gary Bolton to devise complex sound and, lighting effects to illustrate the nonverbal confusion in Emily's mind, as well as a free-form set of panels that can be shifted at will to suggest the different spaces through which she moves during the course of the story. In the end, though, almost all the weight of "Wings" is borne by the actress who plays Emily, who must not only interpret Kopit's disjointed and halting script, but convey, with her face all the existential terror and frustration of a woman struggling to speak to an uncomprehending world. And Lien believes he's found the perfect Emily in 71-year-old Mollie Thompson.
Thompson is no stranger to the Playhouse; in fact, Lien worked her in last season's production of "The Curious Savage," and she sits on OTP's board of artistic directors. That's how she came to be at auditions for "Wings" - -board members are expected to put in an appearance at such events, and she was there in her official capacity, not as a would be performer.
"But I only had three people show up that night, so I asked her if she wouldn't mind reading," said Lien. "It's not easy; Kopit doesn't use a lot of punctuation, even where it could really help the actor choose where to pause, and Mollie had it dead-on."
 But Thompson isn't feeling nearly as confident as her director. "It's very awing and humbling and frustrating," she said. "I've never had such problems learning lines before, because none of it makes any sense. I'm really sweating this."
With a pair of exceptions veterans Hedges MacDonald and Margaret Slawson - the other cast members in "Wings" are relative newcomers to the Playhouse stage. They include Andrea Rothney, Heidi Vogl, Jennifer Eden-burn, Andrea Geiger, Christine Gwillim and Jeffrey Wehr.
The play is divided into four sections. "Prelude" covers the moments before Emily's first stroke; "Catastrophe" is about her trip to an institution where she must live; "Awakening" is a longer section that deals with her struggle to reorient herself and regain lost language skills; and "Explorations" takes her to eventual victory.
"This is not a show that'll have universal acceptance, because it deals with some difficult issues," said Thompson. "But maybe it's something that really needs to be said."
"Wings" will run Oct. 11-12, 17- 19 and 24-26. Performances are at 8 p.m. Tickets are $8.
Tickets are on sale now. For more information, contact the Old Town Playhouse business office at 947-2210, e-mail at otp@traverse.net or visit the Web site at www.oldtownplayhouse.com.