Review: 'Teacher in The House: A True Tale of Urban Survival'

By Lucía Camargo Rojas

“Teacher in The House: A True Tale of Human Survival” is a funny, emotive and biographical one-woman play that explains actress Susan Jeremy’s decision to teach children with life-threatening illness at their homes. The show, presented at Theatre 99, is part of the Piccolo Fringe series.

Successfully performing 10 different characters, Jeremy tells four interweaving stories: her childhood memories when she was a student, her experience as a public school teacher, her own cancer treatment and her role as an educator.

Without any effort or intermission she performed distinctly different characters, such as a policeman and a kid with attention deficit disorder. Her acting was so compelling that only with the tone of her voice, a movement, an attitude, it was clear when she changed from one character to another, and when she shifted to a new scene.

Most importantly, she was able to describe regular life and the peculiarities of each character and each environment, prompting laughter throughout the performance. Two of her funniest descriptions were about the Hispanic neighborhood in New York City, where people are so warm everyone is half-naked, and about how she won the respect of her 7th grade students when she taught them about drugs, including illegal ones.

Those funny moments, though, were a kind of an introduction to the most difficult part of the performance, when she shares her experience with cancer and chemotherapy. Up to this moment the pace of the storytelling was quick and the mood festive. But once her character is coping with illness, the performance became more reflective.

Jeremy clearly took a risk in this show: She wanted to discuss her breast cancer fight with humor. Remarkably, she achieved that goal and simultaneously paid tribute to the teacher helping others face similar battles.

Between jokes, she signaled the importance of helping children struggling with illness, avoiding sentimentality and pity. She rightly chose the perfect way to convey her message: with laughter, lots of laughter.

Published in The Post and Courier on June 7, 2013

Q&A with Nathan Durfee

By Lucía Camargo Rojas

The original canvas of this year’s Piccolo Spoleto poster is being exhibited in “Tales Transposed: A Celebration of Imagination”. It is called “Bartholomeux Taken by the Piccolo” and was made by the artist Nathan Durfee.

Durfee agreed to talk to The Post and Courier about the meaning of this image.

Q: How did you end up doing this year’s Piccolo Spoleto poster?

A: Rebecca Gosnell, who is affiliated with the Office of Cultural Affairs, was a big fan of my work and approached Ellen (Dressler Moryl). Rebecca dropped my work (off with) them, and they thought it could be a good match for the festival. They told me: “Hey, we love this Bartholomeux character, and we want to incorporate it into this year’s Piccolo poster.”


Q: When did you start drawing Bartholomeux?

A: I came up with the dog Bartholomeux about two years ago. What is interesting about him is that he has this affiliation with the cardinal birds, and I have done a whole series of cardinals, where each cardinal has its own personality.


Q: What is the idea behind “Bartholomeux Taken by the Piccolo”?

A: I thought it would be interesting to have Bartholomeux embodying the festival where the cardinals represent all the individual performers. If you look at the poster, you will see that one cardinal is an opera singer, another one is a musical conductor, another a guitar player and so on.


Q: What is the role of Bartholomeux in the poster?

A: He is like a leader of the other artists, which is like what all festivals are about. If you bring all of these different performers and artists together, it is more than just the individual parts.

Published in The Post and Courier on June 4, 2013

Review: Tales Transposed, art at City Gallery

By Lucía Camargo Rojas

The infinite possibilities for telling stories through sculpture, painting and collage are evident throughout the Piccolo Spoleto arts exhibition “Tales Transposed: A Celebration of Imagination.” But Nathan Durfee’s work catches more than its share of attention, demonstrating why he deserves the entire first floor of the City Gallery at Waterfront Park.

Durfee is a magician of contrasts. Complementary colors as well as characters harmonize in his work as if they were made for one another. The 24 bright canvases clearly show his desire to depict an understanding between characters from different worlds.

The main character in this series, the dog Bartholomeux, plays the flute or a record player in order to speak the language of the cardinal birds. In the outstanding canvas “Bartholomeux Swallowed in the Red,” the dog is delightfully surrounded by several birds to the point where the two species seem to become one.

Durfee’s strongest tool is his ability to use his background as an illustrator to paint colorful canvases that tell a story. Seeing several of his paintings becomes a reading experience that makes you want to organize Bartholomeux’s transformation chronologically. Durfee’s imagination captivates from beginning to end. Comparing his first pencil drafts with his finished works gives a sense of how this remarkable artist develops his ideas.

The exploration of stories continues on the second floor of the exhibition, with the collages of Lillian Trettin and the sculptures of Judy Mooney.

Trettin’s work is risky. She carefully cuts handmade, hand-painted and commercial papers, then reassembles the pieces to create satirical and colorful scenes based on Flannery O’Connor novels. Some of her pieces are extremely powerful, like “Jesus Was the Jagged Shape in the Back of His Mind” (2012), inspired by O’Connor’s “Wise Blood,” while others lack some energy.

Mooney’s pieces depict the stories of Gullah-Geechee people through rustic clay sculptures that respectfully evoke an ancestral knowledge. The artist’s research into Gullah traditions is evident in the compelling architectural pieces that seem to keep a secret that one would like to find.

Published in The Post and Courier on June 4, 2013

Art of Recovery: Coping with mental illness

Image by Vinny Y. Huang/ Special to The Post and Courier

By Lucía Camargo Rojas

In the first of two Brent Ashley paintings at Circular Congregational Church, the artist is depicted as an abstract figure trying to balance seven red stars. The second, more realistic piece features bigger stars that are delicately placed to harmonize with Ashley’s more energetic body.

“In the first one, I’m confused and tired,” he said of the two works. “In the second one, I’m part of my present rather than disconnected from it.”

They represent two very distinct periods in Ashley’s life: before and after he began to be treated for Bipolar II disorder. They are among the 92 paintings shown in the “The Art of Recovery” exhibition, part of the Piccolo Spoleto Festival.

The exhibition, which was organized by the South Carolina Department of Mental Health, features artwork by people living with mental illness who use painting as a therapeutic tool, often because they were already interested in art.

The Department of Mental Health treats 100,000 patients a year in its 17 state centers, some of which have multiple clinics. Three centers — Greenville Mental Health Center, Coastal Empire Community Mental Health Center and Aiken Barnwell Community Mental Health Center — offer art classes.

Brian Marks was a mental health patient in the late 1990s and now is an art teacher in the Greenville office. Some of his pupils are among those exhibiting their work in “The Art of Recovery.”

“Psychotherapy can help heal the mind, but art takes a step further and helps to heal the soul as well,” Marks said.

The Art of Recovery program, which received the 2006 Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Governor’s Award for the Arts, frequently looks to exhibit these paintings in settings beyond the department’s administration buildings. Sue Perry, director of community resource development at the Department of Mental Health, said being part of Piccolo Spoleto was a dream come true for both staff members and artists.

Perry has been in charge of the program since its beginning in 2001. She believes that when patients show their art in public, their illness becomes secondary and they can see themselves first and foremost as artists.

For the festival, the Art of Recovery committee selected pieces related to recovery and hope. They also tried to include different painting media to show the diversity of artwork produced throughout the state.

All of the artists involved have stories related to their mental health struggles, Ashley said.

“There are a lot of things that people who have the illness don’t understand,” he said. “On this side you are sane, and on the other side you are crazy. You are walking on a tightrope between it.”

In cases like these, Marks said, art becomes an opportunity for people to express themselves when words may fail them.

Ashley believes that art helps him get control of his thoughts. “I went from being a college graduate to sleep as a homeless man in Arizona because I didn’t want to confront who I was,” he said.

But after undergoing therapy and getting back to his art, he began to believe in himself again. His hope is represented by the green hands in both of his current pieces — and especially by the second one, which clearly depicts someone looking toward the future.

Published in The Post and Courier on June 2, 2013

Review: Women of Lockerbie

The Post and Courier image

By Lucía Camargo Rojas

“Women of Lockerbie” is a moving play that deals with the psychological effects of a tragedy. Devorah Brevoort’s script, which hinges on the 1988 crash of Pan Am Flight 103 in Lockerbie, Scotland, tells the story of fictional characters whose grief for the loss of a loved one is transformative.

The play is being performed at the Chapel Theater by the College of Charleston Department of Theater and Dance as part of the Piccolo Spoleto Festival.

Madeline (Ryan Gunning) and Bill Livingston (Peter Spearman) are a couple from New Jersey who travel to Scotland seven years after the crash, hoping to find some belongings of their son, Adam. While the mother looks fiercely for her son’s remains, the father meets a group of women who wants to persuade U.S. government official George Jones (Bronson Taylor) not to burn the passenger’s clothing, sealed in bags.

At the beginning, the story’s pace is a bit slow, with the main characters not getting as much attention as, for example, a scene-stealing Scottish woman with a walking stick. Gradually, though, Madeline, an unstable woman unable to deal with her grief, becomes the center of the story.

Even though Gunning is a young woman, she convincingly portrays a mature mother, and among her finest moments is the delicate way she describes the realization that her son was on the plane.

Indeed, this vibrant role overshadowed that of her husband. One would expect a more dramatic explosion from a father who has hidden his feelings for so many years. Simultaneously, the character of Olive Allison (Brenna McNamara) is quite rigid, although she seems much more vivid when it becomes evident that she has also been affected by the crash.

What is remarkable about this play is the ability to depict the different aspects of grief: fault (“Why did I tell him to come for Christmas?”), anxiety, frustration (“Why did this happen to me?”) and hate, to the point that the audience shares the distress of the characters. The simple stage helps to create a mournful and respectful environment reinforced by a chorus that highlights the pain and simultaneously gives rhythm to the plot.

Even though Brevoort at times over-explains the characters’ pain, she does succeed in showing their need to achieve peace of mind.

The strength of “Women of Lockerbie” is its ability to describe suffering in a way that goes beyond a particular tragedy and applies to any calamity, and also the way it highlights the difficulty of true forgiveness.

With such dramatic scenes, several moments — featuring the chorus; Taylor’s strong performance; Allyson Musmeci’s funny portrayal of Hattie, who works for the U.S official; and especially a scene of the women washing the clothes — are a necessary relief for an audience seeking a similar serenity as the characters.

Published in The Post and Courier on May 27, 2013