Sketchbook
of an Artist
A Brush with Georgia
O’Keeffe
Written by Natalie Mosco
Directed by Robert
Kalfin
WorkShop
Theater Company (http://workshoptheater.org/)
Jewel Box
Theater,
Equity Showcase (March
20-April 5: Wed-Sat @
Review by Adam Cooper
For those who
wish to be educated on the life of famed 20th century female artist
Georgia O’Keeffe, Natalie Mosco’s new play A
Brush with Georgia O’Keeffe might be the ticket. More of a living
biographical survey than a penetrating drama, this production, which highlights
episodes throughout O’Keeffe’s career, illustrates clearly there’s more to her legacy
and art than just painting flowers with symbolic feminine sexuality. Mosco, who
stars as O’Keeffe and was in the original cast of the musical Hair, employs a similar exuberance for
life, blossoming from flower child into a woman of flora, and hardly a garden
variety one.
As portrayed in
this production, O’Keeffe is her own kind of bohemian artist. She is very much
into herself, her art, and “finding her myth.” She is little interested in
other people or, apparently, in events outside her artistic life (two world
wars pass by in time scrutinized in her early life with barely an
acknowledgement). Mosco works hard to transcend the pop-image of O’Keeffe as
someone who mainly painted Freudian sexual imagery in flowers. In fact, the
flower series is mentioned briefly and O’Keeffe’s character is pointedly
uninterested in (and even mocks) any notion of psychoanalytical underpinnings in
them. She prominently states early on that she cares little if other people get
any of her work.
Not surprisingly,
O’Keeffe endures a personal and professional world not terribly supportive of
the life she wishes to create for herself. David
Lloyd Walters and Virginia Roncetti,
the other two actors in the production, flesh out a wide swath of other
personages that inhabit her life, most notably muse, mentor, and lover Alfred
Steiglitz. She crosses the country living in and looking for landscapes,
natural and otherwise, to capture on canvas, including well known, very urban
cityscapes, famously making her mark in both the Northeast and the Southwest.
Her privileged background yields to a teaching career, a painting life, and
taboo-challenging, romantic relationships. Her troubled inner life ironically
leads her to psychotherapeutic treatment during a dry period of her painting
career. Yet throughout her life, she always hungrily returns to her agenda of
making her inner experience actualized through her visually artistic endeavors.
This production
probably best serves as a theatrical teaching tool on the life of a somewhat
unsung American artist. The play’s title is apropos as this production offers
more of a brushstroke on O’Keeffe, rather than a full dramatic portrait. Filled
with a poetic sense of how an artist experiences the world coupled with
numerous slim vignettes about her life experiences, the play is entertaining,
educational, and even enchanting, but not overly moving or captivating. All
three actors put in overtime giving sturdy, energetic performances. In fact,
the limitation of just three performers is too economical as the requirement of
playing numerous roles of diverse ages with only minor modifications in costume
and overall ambiance weakens the attempt to present fully-formed scenework.
Robert Kalfin’s deft though narrowly-focused direction
makes thorough use of the 25-seat jewel-box-sized theater space. Props
particularly go to the production crew who mightily shoulder the theatrics that
brought the multiple scenes and scenarios to life. Kevin Judge’s set design features a cubist-like horizontal white
rose backdrop upon which projections of O’Keeffe’s work, locations of her
adventures, and photos of the actual persons portrayed are illuminated. Paul Hudson’s lighting design and Margaret Pine’s sound design are the
production’s heroic workhorses, tirelessly creating situations, establishing
locales, and eliciting mood for the play’s wide-ranging vignettes.
Writing: 1
Directing: 1
Acting: 2
Sets: 2
Costumes: 1
Lighting/Sound: 2
Copyright 2008
by Adam Cooper
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