Hybrid production takes theater in new direction

By Melina Paris, Assistant Editor

Known for its innovative visual, performing and media arts, it’s only fitting that REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater) and CalArts Center for New Performance in February co-presented Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side. Written by award-winning playwright, lecturer and author Adrienne Kennedy (91), the play and this production challenged conventional expectations of theater.

Adrienne Kennedy is one of the American theater’s seminal writers. Funnyhouse of a Negro, which premiered in 1964 and won an Obie Award is still her best known and most frequently mounted play. Kennedy utilizes symbolism and dreamlike conditions to convey messages about racism, sexism, colonialism and other destructive forces. Her stories also incorporate her own personal history and feature Black women as protagonists.

Kennedy has authored about two dozen plays in her six decade career. According to New York Theater critic Jonathan Mandell, in referencing a series of her plays put on in the 2022 New York Theater Festival, they are more frequently studied than produced, as Kennedy herself has complained. Kennedy’s work is admired but many of her plays are difficult for directors to stage — and for audiences to absorb. Her work has been called dark, difficult and abstract. However, at the age of 91, Kennedy made her Broadway debut in December with her play, Ohio State Murders (1992).

In this production, Etta and Ella Harrison are talented academics on the Upper West Side — as well as sisters and rivals. After a lifetime of competition, they are on the verge of destroying each other.

This story has been called baffling. It raises questions that could have varied, ambiguous answers - if at all. In fact, the script reads like a narration which was, at first, puzzling until it became clear this is how the production is staged, with the characters narrating as well as acting. However, amidst the raw emotion and psychological aspects at this story’s core between sisters — Etta, intense and vulnerable and Ella, smooth and confident — and director Monty Cole’s merging of theater and film, a lucid struggle between freedom and madness emerges.

In honor of Kennedy’s rhythmic language and calling back to the original movie houses, the play opens with live pianist Maleke Clemmons who plays a beautiful, melancholic solo. Clemmons later, also commands attention with his velvety baritone when he sings an old spiritual song.

Etta calls Harold Troupe. She leaves a message on his machine.

“I want to talk to you about a coming murder Harold,” said Etta. Troupe is a writer and professor at City College. His books are on Black music and he’s compiling an anthology on Negro Spirituals. Etta lives across 89th Street in a brownstone in a room Troupe can see from his office. Sometimes Etta leaves five messages a night on Troupe’s machine.

While this is happening, sister Ella moves about the stage providing narration — along with some background; Troupe’s stature [handsome, melancholy] and his taste for bacon cheeseburgers. About Etta and her voice message on Troupe’s machine, Ella satirizes her sister.

“Not only did she teach and write, she sometimes acted in her own plays. Her desperate voice is dramatic.”

Through Troupe’s narrative we discover Etta is angry that Ella has written a story about her sister’s devastating years in college, garnering much attention and even selling it to television. Yet, the press barely noticed Etta’s version of her own life y son Remy was supposed to bring cheese and crackers for the ski team potluck, so of course he wanted to bring California Rolls. It was a lot more work, but a good idea. Everyone loves California Rolls. And I am well-trained in making them.

The California Roll is actually from Canada. Japanese-born Chef Hidekazu Tojo first served it in the 1970s at Jinya, a restaurant in Vancouver. Tojo wanted a sushi roll that would appeal to a North American audience that was often skeptical of eating seaweed and raw fish. He concealed the seaweed by rolling it with the rice on the outside, and he used fake crab and avocado to mimic the experience of eating raw tuna. Originally called the “Inside Out Roll,” the staff at Jinya noticed that guests from California were especially enthusiastic about it, so they changed the name.

I was Remy’s age when the California Roll was new and still exotic, but today it’s normal. My local supermarket stocks them pre-made, as well as every ingredient, including the imitation crab, a.k.a “krab.” This pink and white processed food is made from pollock, a fish that’s abundant in the cold, northern waters. The pollock fishery is so healthy that fake crab is one of the most environmentally friendly ways to eat ocean protein. Seaweed is light on the earth as well. It’s farmed in the ocean and needs neither soil, water nor fertilizer. Both ingredients deliver wild, umami-rich complexities.

I made my first California Roll in a sushi class when I was 15. We met one night a week for eight weeks. My teacher was disciplined and precise, like a martial arts master, and drilled us in the techniques, such as fanning the rice while you stir it. The California Roll was only a few years old at the time and was popular and revolutionary enough that we spent a class learning how to make this trendy roll. We used plastic wrap to keep the rice from sticking to the bamboo mats as we rolled them inside out.

The rice gets mixed with a surprising amount of sugar, to balance the salt and vinegar that’s also there. Altogether, the sweet, salty and sour flavors in the rice alone account for three out of the five basic tastes. Bitterness is present in the California Roll from the seaweed