INTERVIEW: ‘City of No Illusions’ casts intimate light on refugee crisis
Photo: City of No Illusions stars Ellen Maddow, Annie Henk and Colleen O’Neill. The play is written and directed by Paul Zimet. Photo courtesy of Suzanne Opton / Provided by Everyman Agency with permission.
City of No Illusions, a new play written and directed by Paul Zimet, takes place in a funeral home in Buffalo, New York, where two people are seeking asylum. The show, which also features original music by Ellen Maddow, is intended to offer a theatrical take on the present refugee crisis.
Featuring 12 international performers, the production runs Feb. 8-24 at La MaMa in Downtown Manhattan. The show comes to the historic Village venue thanks to Talking Band, which was founded in 1974 by Zimet, Maddow and Tina Shepard.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Zimet, an Obie winner, about his new play. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
How would you describe City of No Illusions to audience members thinking about experiencing the show?
The play is a dark comedy set near the U.S. – Canadian border in Buffalo, New York, in a funeral home run by twin sisters which has inadvertently become a sanctuary for two young immigrants. As agents from ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] close in, the lives of the funeral directors become intimately, farcically, and, at times, dangerously entwined with the refugees they harbor. Soon, the funeral home becomes a vital gateway to a new life. Throughout the play, a mysterious trio of musicians, a shadow band, occupy a permeable space, moving across borders and between the living and the dead.
How much was City of No Illusions inspired by recent headlines in the United States?
I’ve been distressed, as many others have, about the way immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers are treated in this country and around the world. I know there is no point in hammering people over the head with what they are already reading in the news, so I wanted to present the two asylum seekers and the people whose lives intersect with theirs in a very specific, human light. I also believe that the more serious the subject, the more important it is to have humor in dealing with it.
What has it been like to work with composer Ellen Maddow on this particular project?
Music is integral to all the Talking Band’s work. It is woven in to the fabric of the shows — not just as underscoring but as an element that moves the stories forward. The music is usually live, and the musicians are characters in the show.
I have been collaborating with Ellen Maddow for almost 50 years, for 45 years with Talking Band and before that with the Open Theater. In addition to being a composer, she is an actor and playwright as well. (She performs the role of one of the sister funeral directors in the show.)
Her music is theatrical and particular to the different world of each show. It therefore spans an astonishing variety of genres, including some that she has invented herself. Her musical settings of the songs are attuned to the rhythms of speech and the meanings of the text. She knows when her music should take center stage and when it needs to offer subtle support. Ellen’s music has defined the Talking Band’s work.
What were the original intentions behind founding Talking Band with Ellen Maddow and Tina Shepard? Have you been surprised by how much the group has accomplished?
Before we founded Talking Band, we all were in the Open Theater, directed by Joseph Chaikin. It was a seminal theater company in the 1960s and early ’70s — one of the first theater ensembles to create works collaboratively. We learned how powerful it was for all members of an ensemble to be invested in the whole artistic endeavor — not just their part, but the content and whole aesthetic of the production.
So, when the Open Theater disbanded in 1973, we knew we wanted to continue work as a creative ensemble. In the works created by the Open Theater, the language was very spare — much was expressed by movement and music. We also wanted to bring some of the heightened energy we had found in physical theater into language.
So, at first, we explored the performance of poetry and then plays by poets. The Open Theater was also a politically engaged theater; its shows weren’t polemical, but suggested alternate ways of being in the world, and explored aspects of human behavior that were not being reflected in the conventional theater and entertainment of the time. When we started Talking Band, we considered ourselves a ‘poetic-political theater.’ In one way, I’m surprised we are still creating and producing works after 45 years, but on the other I’m not — what else would we rather be doing than this work?
The company’s website stresses the necessity of adequate time to develop these pieces. Why is a one to two-year development process so important?
Our work needs a lot of research, experimentation, testing and revision before it reaches its final form. In the years the Open Theater existed, there was higher level of funding for the arts, and it was also cheaper to live in New York City. So we could afford long periods of paid work for the artists. Now, the economic realities make that much harder.
One way Talking Band has dealt with that is by establishing a Performance Lab. These are periodic workshops in which we explore questions of interest to us that could have to do with performance techniques, theatrical genres or other artistic disciplines. The workshops are like pure research — not necessarily aimed at a particular production or performance deadline — but the discoveries made in these labs usually have a way of filtering into our shows.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
City of No Illusions, written and directed by Paul Zimet, plays through Feb. 24 at La MaMa in Downtown Manhattan. It is presented by Talking Band. Click here for more information and tickets.
