The Art and Physicality of Charles Mee

Published: Thu Jan 22, 2004 (updated Thu Oct 30, 2008) in Press

Written by Alex Wen, Daily Bruin

Mee’s art highlights physicality UCLA Theater Festival to showcase raw emotion, energy of plays

“If music be the food of love, play on!”

Shakespeare certainly knew what he was talking about when he penned those immortal lines. The latest in a long line of would-be inheritors to his playwriting throne, Charles Mee has seemingly taken those words to heart. And to great effect.

Mee’s plays, four of which make up UCLA’s inaugural Charles Mee Play Festival and run in repertory at Little Theatre in Macgowan Hall from Jan. 21 to Feb. 7, feature characters exploding into song and dance when dramatic dialogue can no longer contain emotions struggling to burst forth.

“There’s a point in Charles Mee’s plays where words cannot express the way people feel and it becomes physical,” said Jules Willcox, a second-year graduate acting student, who plays Tessa in Mee’s “Summertime,” one of the festival’s four featured plays. “We throw ourselves onto the ground, and we dance and sing and go through these very physical things when the words simply aren’t enough.”

Willcox’s fellow cast member, Gregory Myhre, plays her father Frank in “Summertime,” in addition to the same character in “Wintertime” (a sequel of sorts to the former). Myhre elaborated on the physical aspect of Mee’s plays, a recurring feature which sets the playwright apart from the comparatively more conventional Arthur Millers and Neil Simons that typify mainstream American theater.

“A lot of what makes us get to that point of throwing ourselves around the ground is when communication breaks down and we can no longer communicate in this thick dialogue that (Mee) gives us,” said Myhre, a first-year graduate student in acting. “In other words, what we try to express in words, a lot of the time, is beautiful, and then sometimes, it’s pathetic — (Mee’s take) is a refreshing way to look at not being able to express yourself.”

Still, to the uninitiated, a Mee play might sound like the bastard child of a farce and an off-Broadway musical. Make no mistake, Mee’s critical acclaim is well-earned; and his plays are funny, serious and relevant, with all the requisite signs of literary genius. However, it’s exceedingly difficult to pin down a Mee play. Adjectives are needed – lots of them.

“Out there, outrageous, funny, sad and inventive” are just some of the words UCLA theater professor, Mel Shapiro, uses to describe Mee’s work. Shapiro, who directed a highly lauded production of Mee’s “Big Love” at the Pacific Residence Theatre in Venice last year, has been a prime mover behind the inception of the Charles Mee Festival at UCLA. This time around, he is helming both “Summertime” and Wintertime,” two plays which form part of a yet-to-be completed cycle of “seasonal” plays penned by Mee.

“With (‘Summertime’ and ‘Wintertime,’) I like to think of these two plays as Chekhovian pieces,” Shapiro said. “They’re not major epic world-shaking plays — to a certain extent they’re like chamber pieces rather than big-assed symphonies.”

According to Brian Kite, who serves as co-director on all four plays on the bill including “Orestes 2.0” and “True Love,” Mee often takes larger universal themes like war and revenge — topics dealt with in Greek tragedy, for instance — and makes them relevant and relatable to the modern audience. Nevertheless, no two Mee plays are alike.

“It’s really another challenge and really exciting to come to ‘Summertime,’ which is very light and airy and quick and full of love and romance,” said Myhre of his involvement in both plays. “But in “Wintertime,” it’s low-lying and seething, and just a little more dark.”

Elaborating on “Wintertime,” Tishuan Scott, a first-year graduate acting student, praised the play’s set design.

“It’s amazing to me that the set (for “Wintertime”) is completely white, which gives you this idea of calm and peace and serenity,” Scott said. “But it’s like within the surrounding weather of winter and snow there’s this red hot ball of chaos that’s going on.”

According to Scott, who plays Fran�ois in “Wintertime,” his character is “in love with love, and anything to do with love.”

“The play is all about emotions,” Scott added. “Subjects like philosophy may try to answer questions like ‘What is love?’ But this play goes beyond answering what love is. It displays for you love.”

Or, depending on one’s point of view, the play displays the physical act of love.

“(Mee) talks about sex in such an outrageous way — he has these set monologues that I have never heard before,” Shapiro said, noting that no subject is taboo for Mee as long as he’s able to find the humor in it, which more often than not has proven to be the case. “I mean I would read these plays and laugh and laugh, and my wife, who would be in the next room or downstairs, would say: ‘I bet you’re reading a Charles Mee play.’”

Shapiro has no doubts the upcoming festival will be an eye-opener and a blast for audiences as they get acquainted with an important playwright writing on the pulse of modern America in a medium as old and timeless as classical Greece itself.

“I hope that for the audience, it’ll be a mind-blowing, mind-expanding experience,” Shapiro said. “It’s the perfect date play — bring a date, see these plays and go make love afterwards.”

Shakespeare would approve.