PHOTO BY KIRSTEN SHULTZ
Knowing what you know now, would you do it all over again?
That’s the question that comes to mind in Company of Fools’ “Bright Half Life,” which runs through Saturday at The Liberty Theatre.
The play by Pulitzer Prize nominee Tanya Barfield touches on interracial dating—and marriage. And it touches on homophobia. But it doesn’t fixate on either.
It may take audiences a few minutes to get used to the scenes coming at them—literally at the speed of light. But, once you get used to memories changing with each change of light, it’s easy to get into a rhythm as the two women rifle through nearly 50 years of memories backwards and forward and every which way.
All in 65 minutes.
“In life Event A leads to B which leads to C. But in one’s mind all three events might happen concurrently or out of sequence,” writes Barfield. “I didn’t want it to be saccharine sweet. I wanted it to feel as real and as complicated as an entire life.”
The two women meet at work where Vicky is the supervisor and the tomboyish Erica, a new employee.
Erica, the more spontaneous of the two, is a dreamer, a romantic, sometimes prone to impracticality. And she presses almost immediately for a relationship.
Vicky, a formal button-down collar sort of gal, is more grounded and practical. But she finally gives in, despite being worried about how an office romance would look and what her family might think of her relationship with a white woman.
She’s been called on Oreo—“black on the outside, white on the inside.”
Still, it’s Vicky who coaxes Erica into going skydiving with her in a symbolic representation of jumping into love.
Over the course of the play, they recall raising children, dealing with the pending death of parents and more—sometimes from different points of view as the play explores how people navigate relationships.
The two-woman play, directed by Ilana Becker, features Liz Morgan as 'Vicky' and Sophie Hassett as 'Erica'.
The two New York City-based actors appear in a 2 and a half-foot tall black box that resembles a boxing ring in the middle of the audience.
The analogy to a boxing ring is fitting since they do a lot of verbal sparring.
The play is definitely not a fairy tale story. And it may not rank up there among everyone’s favorite play. But some in the audience have found it moving, absorbing, thought provoking.
One woman—an avid playgoer who is on the theater board in Portland—said she had seen the play done on both coasts in New York and Portland.
“And these two women did a fabulous job,” she added.
IF YOU GO….
“Bright Half Life” starts at 7 p.m. tonight and Thursday, Oct. 11 and 12, and 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday Oct. 13-14 at The Liberty Theatre in Hailey.
Tickets are $35 for members of the Sun Valley Center for the Arts and $40 for nonmembers, $35 for seniors 62 and over and $15 for students with student ID. Tickets are available online at www.sunvalleycenter.org, by phone at 208-578-9122 or at the Liberty Theatre box office at 110 N. Main St., Hailey.
Ten seats are also sold for $10 each at the box office the night of the play. And parties of eight or more receive $35 group-rate tickets.