A world premiere at Coachella Valley Repertory! How exciting is this?
Summer Session With the Bones Brigade, by Kirby Fields, got to the CVRep stage via the organization’s ORIGINS New Works Development Program. After being one of four finalists produced as a staged reading last season, the powers that be decided Summer Session was the most unique of all, and the playwright even flew in from New York to be part of the birth of the production by taking part in the rehearsals.
Adam Karsten, both CVRep’s artistic director and the director of this play, came out onstage to introduce the show as “extraordinary, tough” in his welcome address. The audience couldn’t wait to find out what it was all about, as the drawing on the front of the program is a skull, of all things—with lightning bolts, stars, wings and two bass guitars surrounding it—chomping down on … is that a skateboard?
The setting, by extraordinary designer Jimmy Cuomo, is revealed: Some kids have built a skateboard half-pipe ramp in the hidden-away woods. To get us in the mood, the CVRep sound system is blaring old-school rock ’n’ roll by, for example, Bruce Springsteen, when we shuffle in. On both sides of the stage are smallish movie screens—which during the play show us, for example, the pictures being taken by one of the youngsters. (Unfortunately, these screens didn’t work too well as part of the play.)
The cast consists of four guys and two girls; the word “frenemies” pretty much describes the ever-changing relationships among all of them. We see a lot of variety in their intensity and acceptance—typical, I guess, of hormonal teenagers.
The boys: Ethan Zeph plays Heath, a dark-haired youth who seems a little older and possibly more mature in some ways than the others (though he obsesses throughout the play about being described as an asshole). Alex Michell is Lee, the only Black member of the group; he is actually living in the forest due to his parents’ breakup, as he flees his mother’s new solo life. Bonale Fambrini is Shane, a sensitive and sweet boy who tries to be friends with everyone. Blond, rich-voiced Akiyo Komatsu is DK, who just returned after being in California for two years; he was living with his mother after his father, a doctor, split from the family with a new girlfriend.
The girls: Madeleine D. Hall is Sid, an interesting and rather confident young lady who changes her personality a lot. Keeley Karsten is Loralai, a long-haired girl who allows Sid to put colored streaks in her hair—and then spends most of the rest of the time wearing a hat to cover up whatever happened.
Between scenes, the group dances in unison. Karen Sieber is the show’s movement director, and she has created some extraordinary choreography for these actors. The interpretive movement is modernistic and creates an interesting halt to the action. The volume of the music is, well, loud, and at one point becomes earsplitting.
We’re dealing with teens, which means hormones and sex will eventually rear their heads—and then there’s the language. The first words in the play are four-letter ones, and they’re frequent throughout the show. While this is indeed how some teens talk these days, regardless of how we feel about it, it drove some theater-goers away at intermission—but it oddly informs the whole play.
The members of this group, the Bones Brigade, try to emulate various professional skateboarders, and compare their skateboarding styles to those of their idols. Heath, for example, wants to be like Stacy Peralta.
This two-act play (with an intermission) appears to have little plot, much like teenage summers, until a revelation at the end of Act 1. There is much said about Fourth of July weekend, and the group idly discusses what school will be like when they return—but what happens then is at the center of the play, and it’s a shocker.
At first, this play made me feel incredibly old—and I was not the only one in the audience who was affected that way, as I found out when I shamelessly eavesdropped at intermission. However, the show gives those of us who may not spend a lot of time around teenagers a chance to observe and analyze what matters to these youngsters, and to find out what is important in their lives. That is a rare gift—and it turns out their problems and challenges are the very much the same as ours were “back then.” That is the great lesson of Summer Session With the Bones Brigade.
Summer Session With the Bones Brigade will be performed at 7 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday; and 2 p.m., Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, through Sunday, Dec. 17, at the CVRep Playhouse, 68510 E. Palm Canyon Drive, in Cathedral City. Tickets are $77, with a limited number of $30 tickets for attendees 30 years old or younger, and a limited number of $10 tickets for students 18 years old or younger. For tickets or more information, call 760-296-2966, or visit www.cvrep.org.
