Snippitts of Illusions

Hobo in the back row theater review of Eric(a)

When presented with the question "How do you know what makes you masculine?" in response to the same question he posted on a transgender forum, playwright Matthew Ivan Bennett faced a conundrum: He wasn't sure. He had a grocery list of items certainly, but most, if not all of them were not exclusive to males of the species, and none of them were necessarily tangible in the sense of a satisfactory answer.

How do we know what makes us masculine or feminine? Why do identify with one gender? Why do people of the opposite sex identify with the opposite gender? The playwright approaches these questions with the play Eric(a), a one man/woman show about a transgender female to male man named Eric. Having begun living as a man three years previous, Eric has to establish himself in the eyes of a very conservative Utah society as the male he always felt he was.

The play itself is presented as if Eric is a speaker at a symposium for gender equality. After faltering with his intellectual defense to be transgender, passing out fliers with particular points that he wishes to discuss that focuses on genetic, sociological, and psychological implications of gender, he begins to explain his life: how he always felt like a boy while growing up in his parents conservative LDS household, and while spending 25 years in a traditional LDS marriage. Finally taking the plunge to live life as a man, Eric falls in love for what is really the very first time and it's that event that ties the whole play together.

Eric is played masterfully by Teresa Sanderson in a performance that was both incredibly moving and amazingly believable. It's often said the best actors own their roles and she certainly does here. She's able to take the audience on an incredibly sincere roller-coaster of emotions and help them to identify with a character that they may have little to nothing in common with. By the end of the play you want Eric to go out there and find love with the woman he's fallen for, reestablish connections with family that has rejected him, and generally just be excepted for the guy that he feels he is.

Teresa Sanderson's performance also owes a lot to the lyrical script crafted by Mr. Bennett. The playwright obviously did the legwork on the script, developing it for almost 2 1/2 years before it finally hit the stage with this premiere by Plan-B Theatre Company. There's a sincerity to the language and speech of Eric that can (and did) only come from extensive interviews with transgender individuals, and hearing their story, as well as just spending time online in forums and reading books on the issue. While the play itself is set in Utah, it doesn't take away from the script. I think anybody who was raised in a conservative household will be able to identify with Eric's childhood, and aside from dropping a few place names, there is almost nothing that a non-Utah audience wouldn't get. Perhaps because Mr. Bennett through all the beautiful language endeavors to make Eric simply a human being.

When all is said and done, Eric is simply human. The question of his maleness, or the fact the character was/is biologically female doesn't matter. Eric, like all of us, has that voice of self doubt, and it's that voice that he struggles with. Everybody can identify with that.

Plan-B Theatre Company's Eric(a), by playwright Matthew Ivan Bennet, directed by Jerry Rapier and featuring Teresa Sanderson is premiering this month at the Rose Wagner Theater Studio theater and is worth more than the price of entry. Ticket's and Showtimes.

Labels: Theater Reviews

posted by F.G. Shaw @ 9:44 PM