Dispersion of Light, Desert Ensemble Theatre’s latest production at the Palm Springs Cultural Center, looks at the lives of artist Georgia O’Keeffe and her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz.
This is the world premiere of this play, by author Rich Rubin. The play is set in the 1930s, when the Great Depression was in full swing—and everyone felt it. But artists and photographers soldiered on, pursuing their talents despite the prospect of financial ruin. The Rockefellers created an opportunity for artists to create murals in their new 6,000-seat Radio City Music Hall, and O’Keeffe was chosen as one of the artists. Donald Deskey (1894-1989), the Rockefellers’ employee, here is played by Ray Kelly.
Is there anyone who doesn’t know about Georgia O’Keeffe—or at least her art? The modernist is known for her series of flower paintings, but even though she lived from 1887 to 1986, many of us don’t know much about her personal life. Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), although famous in his day, is not as well-known. Stieglitz, a photographer and influential gallery owner, took credit for discovering and promoting his wife—but he was not faithful to her, and this play opens with him photographing Dorothy Norman (played by Sarah Elizabeth Woolsey), with whom he is having an affair. Norman is not just a model four decades younger than Stieglitz; it turns out she had a tremendous influence on Stieglitz’s career and business life.
Produced by Shawn Abramowitz and directed by Jerome Elliott Moskowitz, Dispersion of Light stars Melanie Blue in the role of O’Keeffe, and Charles Herrera in the role of Stieglitz. The play, rather than dealing with their artistic lives, is about their marriage (Stieglitz’s second), to which the biggest threats seem to be Georgia’s rather obsessive instability and Alfred’s chronic lying.
Georgia’s dearest friend is Rebecca Salsbury Strand (1892-1967), played by Lisa Hammert. She is married to Paul Strand, another modernist photographer, but “Beck,” as she is called, is having an affair, and plans to leave her husband. The artist was known for her reverse-oil-on-glass work, but career is ignored by the author.
That gets to the heart of the problem with the writing of this play: We see almost none of these characters’ famous works, and instead, we learn all about their not-terribly-interesting private lives. (However, the printed program contains not just photos of the actors, but also of the actual people portrayed here. Nice touch.) Dispersion of Light is a talky play, with very little movement—everything is just a discussion. It would help if the dialogue were tightened up, and closer attention were paid to cues. The space between talking actors has to be filled with some kind of tension if the moment is to work, and too often, these brief pauses went empty. None of these characters is really very likable, though Hammert’s Beck comes closest, thanks to her fabulous smile.
The set, created by Thomas L. Valach, is strikingly angular and modernistic. One side of the stage represents New York and is exclusively cold greys, whereas the opposite side, representing Taos, N.M., warms up with a bold slash in a rust color. A vent high up on the side stage wall unnecessarily pumped a smoky (and smelly, for those of us in the front of the house) “haze.”
At this point, we should mention the spot-on lighting of Nick Wass, and the excellent timing of the lighting cues. Upstage in the middle of the set is a bed, which gets remade between scenes and plays several different parts, such as a hospital bed and a love nest. We gradually learn that it is Georgia’s work which is paying the rent on both homes, and that although she tries to confront Stieglitz about his relationship with Norman, Stieglitz continues to lie about everything. He has come to look down on Georgia as “a child” and “a toddler.” And yet they have some admiration and respect for each other: “No one understands light better than Stieglitz” Georgia admits. When she winds up in a sickbed, she still worries about him.
Nothing really happens in this play. Have we become junkies for action, expecting that someone will be killed or kidnapped, or a life will be changed somehow? In any case, Dispersion of Light, as this brand-new play stands now, is just a portrait of a struggling marriage—unfortunate, but not really much of a surprise, given the personalities involved.
Desert Ensemble Theatre’s production of Dispersion of Light will be performed at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday; and 2 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, through Sunday, Feb. 1, at the Palm Springs Cultural Center, at 2300 E. Baristo Road, in Palm Springs. Tickets are $44.20. For tickets or more information, call 760-565-2476, or visit www.desertensembletheatre.org.