1. How did you come across the play, Gidion’s Knot? Why did you choose to direct it?
I first read the play in AmericanTheatre magazine, which occasionally prints new American plays. I decided to direct it for a number of reasons: it’s a strong, challenging two-hander for two females written by a female, and for years I have been a strong advocate for American female playwrights and actors; it lends itself to flexible staging, which has always appealed to me; it articulates social and moral questions which it does not presume to answer; it is a dark play with a strong sense of irony and touches of unexpected humor; it seemed to me to bring a good balance to the Garfield 2014-15 season.
2. What impact do you think this production will have on its audience? Any particular message you hope to convey?
I hope each performance will give its audience an engaging theatrical experience that will enable them to share vicariously in the lives of the characters. Which means what? That the good people in the audience will encounter in their own way the conflict, the grief, the self-discovery that is occurring before them and that they might wonder about human relationship, including their own.
3. You have designed a very unique set, choosing not to use the stage. Why? How does this choice affect the actors? The audience?
I have always enjoyed acting and directing in “the round” or some variation of it. I guess because it allows for a different sort of communication between actor and audience. I think it generates a degree of honesty that is easy to avoid when the physical and emotional space between actor and audience includes an imaginary fourth wall.
4. How will this production reach out to the mental health community? Talk about your decision to hold a talk back after one of the performances.
There are troubling questions and troubled people in the play and it just might provide opportunity for those things to find public discussion. A talk-back is one such opportunity. The play is not a treatise on any aspect of mental health. It is a story about rather ordinary people who experience loss and its accompanying grief, and who can’t avoid questions of morality, parenting, teaching, and the Gordian knot that they feel ties them up.
Gidion’s Knot
Feb 20-22 + Feb 27-Mar 1 + Mar 6-8
Written by Johnna Adams
Directed by Timothy Maloney
More Info and Tickets Here