Season 5 – Buntport Theater

A down shot of a woman and three men all dressed in black and grey 1800s funeral attire are looking up and out seriously while standing on a wooden floor. Behind is a red curtain. To the right of them, in the shadows, is small side table with a glass and gold tray next to a wooden chair.

Westword- A Cut Above • Buntport reaches new heights with A Synopsis of Butchery.

To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrific of these extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality. That it has frequently, very frequently, so fallen will scarcely be denied by those who think. The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? We know that there are diseases in which occur total cessations of all the apparent functions of vitality, and yet in which these cessations are merely suspensions, properly so called. They are only temporary pauses in the incomprehensible mechanism. A certain period elapses, and some unseen mysterious principle again sets in motion the magic pinions and the wizard wheels. The silver cord was not for ever loosed, nor the golden bowl irreparably broken. But where, meantime, was the soul?
— Edgar Allan Poe, “The Premature Burial”

The Victorians’ fascination with death — their spiritualist groups and seances, their widespread fear of being buried alive — seems quaint to us now, when medicine and technology provide fairly clear markers of the end of brain activity. But have we really come so far? While her doctors and husband believed that poor Terry Schiavo was functionally dead, thousands of Americans — including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist — insisted she was fully conscious, trapped in her rigid, comatose body. This is surely a nightmare as ugly as anything Poe could have imagined. Some years ago, a spate of newspaper articles told of patients who had been too lightly anesthetized and awoke in the middle of surgery, paralyzed and unable to alert the surgeon to the terrible pain they were suffering. There may be truth to these fears — we still don’t completely understand comas — but they are also expressions of something primal, something we experience in those nightmares where we’re desperate to escape an engulfing danger but are unable to cry out or move.

Like Poe’s prose style, the Victorian attitude toward these terrors has a certain dark gorgeousness, and Buntport Theater captures it brilliantly in A Synopsis of Butchery, an elegant production that manages to be lush and spare at the same time. Buntport’s home base is a cavernous warehouse, but for this play, the acting area has been reduced to a lighted box representing an ornate, old-fashioned, steeply raked stage. The story concerns Washington Irving Bishop, a mentalist who was subject to fits of catalepsy during which his body became rigid and his breathing seemed to stop. He collapsed after a strenuous New York performance, and two men — a doctor and a shoemaker — promptly performed an autopsy on him. Bishop’s mother, Eleanor Fletcher Bishop, was convinced that her son had been cut up while still alive, murdered by the doctor’s curiosity about his brain. She wrote a book called A Synopsis of Butchery of the Late Sir Washington Irving Bishop (Kamilimilianalani) a Most Worthy Mason of the Thirty-Second Degree, the Mind Reader, and Philanthropist by Eleanor Fletcher Bishop, His Broken-Hearted Mother, and dedicated her life to the search for justice and the prevention of similar catastrophes in the future. (There is only one certain proof of death, she informs us sternly in the play: putrescence.)

Buntport’s production is based on Eleanor Fletcher Bishop’s book and other sources. In this version — and I don’t know how much of it is historically accurate — Eleanor has hired three actors and taken her account of events on the road. The piece is an amalgam of her observations and outbursts; tantalizing historical tidbits, such as the description of the breathing tubes and signaling devices placed in some nineteenth-century coffins; scenes from the trial of the doctor — not as they actually occurred, but as Eleanor thinks they should have; and re-enactments of the fatal autopsy itself.

Erin Rollman gives a tour de force performance as Eleanor. Sometimes she’s squeaky and absurd, sometimes full of matronly dignity, but at every moment she’s deeply immersed in the part. She makes Eleanor’s arguments, her warnings that any one of us could end up buried alive, so forceful and heartfelt that we almost believe them, as well as the spiritual powers she ascribes to herself and her son — who was, in fact, a bit of a fraud. It’s clear that Eleanor was one of those engulfing, child devouring mothers, and Rollman fully communicates both her bullying and her hucksterism (at one point, the actors take collection baskets into the audience). But she also reveals the woman’s profound sorrow.

Brian Colonna, Erik Edborg and Evan Weissman each play several roles. The script veers from funny to disturbing, and one of this production’s most impressive features is the entire cast’s control of the tone. The first time the autopsy is mimed, it’s cartoonish. But the final, equally stylized re enactment approaches real horror, as Washington Irving (played by Weissman) rises three times from the slab, crying out, “Mother!”

Last year, Buntport experimented with two forms it had never tried before, realism and horror — not as splattershock, but as a way of examining the world. While last season’s offerings worked well enough, A Synopsis of Butchery seems a large step forward. It retains the sense of play and experimentation we expect of Buntport, but the work is more unified, with a heightened sense of artistic control.

-Juliet Wittman, May 18, 2006, Westword

A woman in 1800s black funeral dress stands in a spotlight on a wooden stage framed by a yellow and grey decorated proscenium. The stage has four footlights and red curtains.

Rocky Mountain News- ‘Butchery’ spares no details

A Synopsis of Butchery is a production after a con man’s heart, a strange little Victorian knick-knack of a play.

The collaborative Buntport Theater company was considering three play premises when audiences voted on this one, resulting in the story of Eleanor Fletcher Bishop, an obsessed and melodramatic grieving mother with a flair for performance.

Bishop was a real woman. Her son, Washington Irving Bishop, was a popular 19th-century mentalist known to fall spontaneously into a catatonic state. In 1889, he collapsed during one performance and was pronounced dead. An autopsy was quicky performed, and Eleanor Bishop was convinced that it was the autopsy, not the coma, that had killed her son. She spent the rest of her life traveling the country to stir up public sentiment against the doctors involved.

The title of the book she wrote is nearly irresistible: A Mother’s Life Dedicated and an Appeal for Justice to All Brother Masons and the Generous Public – A Synopsis of the Butchery of the Late Sir Washington Irving Bishop (Kamilimilianalani) A Most Worthy Mason of the Thirty-Second Degree, the Mind Reader, and Philanthropist By Eleanor Fletcher Bishop, His Broken-Hearted Mother.

Erin Rollman plays Eleanor with just that mix of fervor, self-absorption and 19th-century style. She treats the audience as her audience, here to listen to her tragic tale and exhortations for justice. In her attempt, she re-creates the death of her son and the trial of the doctors.

Her performance takes place on a wonderful approximation of a Victorian lecture hall, with the Buntport warehouse turned into a tiny, square, dramatically raked proscenium stage. The production is wholly invested in its period details, from the rolling painted scenery to the disturbingly accurate muttonchops on Brian Colonna.

Colonna, Erik Edborg and Evan Weissman play the surrounding characters, including Colonna and Edborg as the doctors and Weissman as the lost son. Colonna presents a smug, beady-eyed M.D. on trial, while Edborg has a delightfully old-fashioned nature about him and Weissman brings forth a judge describing the proceedings in the style of Walter Winchell.

But Eleanor is the center of the piece, just as her son is the center of her world. Her tragic tale is peppered with name-dropping asides and conspiracy theories. Most of all, Rollman brings us into the Victorian lecture as entertainment, where warnings of gore are actually meant to entice and integrity is a fluid concept.

Somewhere in the middle, as the trial is re-enacted, the play begins to stretch its premise, but makes up for it with a head-spinner of an ending. Too bad there’s no show on Sunday – this could be a fine Mother’s Day outing for those with a dark sense of gratitude.

-Lisa Bornstein, May 12, 2006, Rocky Mountain News

A man is lying on his back on a wooden table with a man standing on either side of him. They are all dressed in 1800s black and grey suits. The dark-haired man on the left is holding a hammer and chisel as if about to strike the chest of the man lying on the table. The other man is pulling out a long strand of red fabric pieces tied together from the abdomen of the man on the table.

Backstage.com- Review: ‘A Synopsis of Butchery’

Adorned in morning coats and black crepe, framed by red velvet curtains, their pale faces illuminated by the footlights, members of Denver’s amazing Buntport Theater Company solemnly pass through their mirthfully macabre piece of Grand Guignol, A Synopsis of Butchery.

How do they do it? This collective of seven began working together in 1998 and has created 18 shows to date. Their skills encompass all aspects of production, from design and tech to script and direction. The result is a body of work that’s remarkably diverse, save perhaps for a thread of melancholic whimsy.

A Synopsis of Butchery is ostensibly a meditation on untimely death, injustice, and the paralyzing agonies of grief. Surely not subjects to wring laughs from, yet Buntport does so by piercing the conceits of Victorian theatre, the self-righteousness of 19th-century reformers, and the suffocation of mother love.

The company’s capacious warehouse space has been cut down into a small proscenium, with a raked stage and a back wall of scrims and backdrops painted in wan period style. It resembles nothing so much as a torch-lit carnival sideshow. The gruesome tale that unfolds is part diatribe, part shocker — but ultimately a portrait of a psyche shattered by reality’s vicissitudes.

At the center of the play is Eleanor Bishop, played by the brilliant Erin Rollman. She is best known for her comic turns not because she is inherently funny, but because she invests herself so thoroughly in her characters that we can perceive their sweet foolishness from a mile away.

As Bishop, Rollman inveighs against the late-19th-century medical and legal professions with regard to the death of her only and overly beloved son, a fictional mentalist named Washington Irving Bishop (Evan Weissman). Prone to catalepsy, her son, she claims, was killed by a premature autopsy despite a note in his breast pocket asserting, “I am not dead, but in a state that defies human explanation.”

Grief-stricken, she harangues the audience with her diatribe, aided by other members of the troupe (Brian Colonna, Erik Edborg, and Weissman, doing double duty) and by backstage magic provided by Matt Petraglia and Samantha Schmitz (there are trapdoors, a coffin frame that rises around her son’s body, and an eerie Victrola-driven soundtrack).

Rollman strikes any number of tragic and extravagant poses; her research into the acting style of the era is impeccable. As the show progresses, it becomes more and more apparent that Bishop is lavishly living a kind of surrogate martyrdom: She demands meaning in (and income from) her son’s demise. The support of the other characters begins to break down, and in the end she takes her son’s place on the slab. What was polemic becomes pathos.

After 90 unrelenting minutes, we are released. We have laughed and we have sat agape. Like many of Buntport’s creations, the show challenges as much as it entertains. For those looking for laughs or pause, A Synopsis of Butchery is another unforgettable accomplishment by the company.

-Brad Weisman, May 09, 2006, www.backstage.com

A man in a black 1800s suit is seated in a wooden chair facing forward with his head looking to his left at a woman in a black funeral dress. they are on a wood planked floor with foot lights and a red curtain behind in the distance. Between them stands another man in dramatic overhead light.

Variety- A Synopsis of Butchery

The master of terror himself, Edgar Allan Poe, could not have written a more chilling account of catalepsy mistaken for rigor mortis than Eleanor Fletcher Bishop’s real-life, 19th-Century tale of her then famous mind-reading son’s demise. Adapted for the stage by Denver’s ever-unpredictable and resourceful Buntport Theatre Company as its 18th world premiere (not including 65 “sit-com” episodes) since the company’s inception in May of 2001, A Synopsis of Butchery explores Mrs. Bishop’s gruesome contention that two doctors, one of whom was unlicensed, performed a illegal autopsy on her son while he was still alive, but in a trance-like state that only resembled death.

As befitting the setting, the story is told in melodramatic style dressed in delightful period costumes on a heavily-raked proscenium-wrapped stage, replete with footlights and a Victrola that provides pieces of the soundtrack.

Additional throwback effects include a trapdoor and a moving backdrop to simulate motion during a carriage ride.

Despite her son’s renown, it is the former actress, Mrs. Bishop, that is the center of attention, recounting the events and casting herself as the revenging angel. Erin Rollman, who edits the original scripts developed by the company, displays her considerable emotional and vocal range as the irrepressible and doting mother who campaigns for justice against what she sees as the corrupt medical and legal establishments that have conspired to cover up her son’s murder.

The details of Ms. Rollman’s curtain-to-curtain performance-her plaintive eyes, hand fluttering, calculated and finessed modulations, and unflinching insistence on her character’s version of events-bring the narrative structure alive and carry it for the entire 83-minute act.

Her Mrs. Bishop is aided in the cause by three actors she employs to help recreate the crime and the trial that followed: the mad-cap Brian Colonna inhabits villain number one, Dr. John A. Irwin, with furtive glances, vain self-possession, and duplicitous insinuations, as well as adding a hilarious send up of a monocled-challenged witness; understated Erik Edborg smiles and holds his tongue as the evasive villain number two, Dr. Frank Ferguson, an ex-shoe repairman, and contributes a comical turn as a flaming theatrical agent with an obsession for his walking stick; and the pesky Evan Weissman conjures further off-beat shtick as the mostly-dead famous mentalist and a mocking judge.

As Mrs. Bishop builds her case for malpractice and malfeasance against two professions that to this day retain control over critical forensic reviews (e.g., JFK’s autopsy), we discover her credentials as one of the leading spiritualists of her day, who carried on a correspondence with Harry Houdini and held séances for notables, including Washington Irving (for whom her son was named). Using every theatrical device at her disposal, including patriotic music and graphic dramatizations, she plays the audience like mesmerized subjects, plying them for donations and calling them to action. Though her genre is a far cry from Molière’s comedies that attacked the same targets, Rollman’s Mrs. Bishop nevertheless lands her jabs with equally-pointed satirical punch.

-Bob Bows, May 7th,2006, Variety

Denver Post- “Butchery” carves out a bold tale

“Well, that was different,” a titillated woman said leaving Buntport’s 18th original production, “A Synopsis of Butchery.”

Of course, saying something is “different” at Buntport is like saying something is “just what you expected” anywhere else. When the lights go down, you never know where you are going to be when they come back up.

Buntport is an experimental, collaborative theater company whose youngsters take novel theatrical concepts and make them accessible, understandable and even fun for audiences. Talk about avant garde.

“Butchery” does not rely on visual trickery. This is something far more magical and unexpected. It’s a bona-fide character study that proves “terrific acting” belongs on the long list of accolades used to describe this spellbinding troupe.

The great Erin Rollman plays Eleanor Fletcher Bishop, aggrieved mother of celebrated mentalist Washington Irving Bishop. He was prone to fits of extreme catalepsy – long, death-like trances. Two doctors, perhaps believing Bishop to be dead (or perhaps not caring), were curious whether anything was unusual about his brain, so they performed an unauthorized autopsy on him in 1889. Eleanor was convinced her son was alive at the time, and therefore was murdered by autopsy. A court disagreed.

In “Butchery,” Eleanor takes her case to the people, as victims of ghastly true crimes often do today. But in the absence of TV, what better audience for this freak show than a carnival? Eleanor narrates her biased tale as hired actors re-enact events.

This premise, while provocative, never could carry 90 minutes. I thought the Buntporters might take us into the actual world of telepathy, or explore the shadowy boundaries of where life ends and death begins. Instead, the focus turns to this embittered, lost mother unraveling before our eyes. That’s not a bad alternative.

“Butchery” is not as funny or engaging as previous Buntport efforts; the writing not as profound. But it’s a delight to simply watch Rollman at work.

In demonstrating Eleanor’s palpable grief, she also unknowingly communicates what a delusional, insufferable mama she must have been. Eleanor was a failed stage diva, and it’s easy to see why. She wants justice, yes, but one can’t help but wonder if she’s not also an opportunist whose tragic tale has punched her ticket back to a sorry stage.

“Butchery” came from Buntport’s loyal audiences, who were gathered last summer and offered three possible show concepts to choose from.

It’s power to the people at Buntport. But the juice comes from the players’ bold, ongoing experimentation with craft.

-John Moore, April 28, 2006, Denver Post

A woman and three men in 1800s funeral attire are looking forward in front of a red curtain.

A Synopsis Of Butchery

A MOTHER’S ANGUISH

A black comedy sparked by an unusual crisis of faith. An intimate look at what we can believe, if anything.

(more…)

A strange portrait of four emotionless people. They all wear gloves and dark clothes. They have a lot of eye make-up, giving a sunken eye effect. In the background is a window.

Rocky Mountain News- ‘Transformation’ sets stage for fright

Scary on stage is a hard trick to pull off.

It’s more difficult to lose yourself in a room where you know that the actors are actors and that the lights and sound are being manipulated.

Which makes Buntport’s first foray into the realm of terror an impressive undertaking. Because, above all, Horror: The Transformation is scary.

Not in a deep, psychological way, but in the more visceral, trying-to-prepare-yourself-for-the-next jolt manner.

Based on an 18th-century story, The Transformation’s basic story is that of a man who heard voices telling him to kill his family. But the plot is both less thrilling and less involving than the general atmosphere Buntport creates.

From the beginning, all is unsettling. First, there’s the set: a life-size, two-story dollhouse with a cutaway front wall that reveals the family inside. That house contains mysteries, revealed with an impressive showmanship and creativity that shows theater can equal or surpass CGI effects.

The house is furnished, but not quite comfortable. There are signs of life within, but not enough to make it homey. And the dim lights cast on the stage set an audience on edge waiting for the shocks.

Within that house gathers the family: pleasant parents Theodore (Brian Colonna) and Catherine (Erin Rollman), his sister and her brother (Hannah Duggan and Evan Weissman) and Theodore and Catherine’s children, represented by hollow-eyed puppets that are passed off and portrayed by the entire cast.

Enter a mysterious stranger, Carwin (Erik Edborg), a magician who is in fact less threatening than what the house itself contains. Soon Theodore is hearing disembodied voices, leading to the play’s denouement.

It’s not the story; it’s the style. Scenes are punctuated by blackouts that threaten sudden shocks. Walls move and bleed. The family itself comes from no realistic period: they speak in a kind of heightened Edwardian style but dress in a contemporary manner and live in a contemporary home. Between the words are spaces, filled with foreboding.

The story needs some work – some propulsion, and coherency. And the puppets are nifty, but not given as much character as they could be.

Combine those two facets with the atmosphere, though, and The Transformation could be a horror of the best kind.

-Lisa Bornstein, November 25, 2005, Rocky Mountain News

Close-up of a woman's face. Her eyes look sunken in, thanks to heavy makeup. Next to her face is a large creepy doll's face. Its eye sockets are empty in its white round head.

Westword- Mind Puppetry • Horror: The Transformation, though flawed is still moving

Buntport’s Horror: The Transformation is based on Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland, a novel published in 1798, and inspired by the true story of a farmer who killed his wife and children. It’s not done as a period piece, though the clothes and setting aren’t strictly modern, either; At one point, a character puts a record on a turntable, which would set the date somewhere in the mid twentieth century. A lot of the dialogue retains Wieland‘s eighteenth-century focus and rhythm.

Although the acting is somewhat naturalistic – at least in spots – the production has many stylized elements. The actors all wear gloves; their eyes are heavily shadowed. Two children are represented by ingeniously-constructed puppets. There are long periods during which we, the audience, sit in absolute darkness, and often the theatre is filled with odd and insinuating sounds; Music. Panting. A low, breastbone-vibrating rumble. Footsteps. Instrumental shrieks.

It’s difficult to scare audiences these days, with films routinely providing rivers of blood, grotesquely splintered bodies and realistic brain splatters. It’s particularly hard for a theater group that lacks the technical resources of, say, the Denver Center. In addition, the plot of Brown’s novel doesn’t entirely hold together, and concepts that would have spooked people a couple of centuries ago – ventriloquism, the practice of magic, spontaneous combustion – don’t have the same impact today.

The play’s ending left me confused. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t figure out whether the impulse that drove the protagonist, Theodore, to murder was supernatural or only the workings of his own religion-maddened mind – that ambiguity was obviously intended. It was that I wasn’t sure what had actually happened until I got home later and Googled: “Brown. Wieland. Plot.”

Despite this, the Buntport production does succeed, both as an extended rumination on the first Gothic novel ever published in America, and in creating a real sense of fear and unease in a contemporary audience.

Theodore is forever talking with the members of his family – his sister Clara and her friend Henry, his wife Catherine and their two children – about science and belief and the role of God in human affairs. Those who lack belief, the play suggests, also lack any reason for action in the world. But those who do believe risk illusion, illogic and even madness.

Theodore and Clara’s father was a highly religious man who built a temple where he worshiped alone. One night he was found there, naked, bruised and burned; the play suggests that he had spontaneously burst into flame. This man’s own father had thrown himself over a cliff. Somehow, these deaths seem to pre-ordain Theodore’s murders. Buntport communicates all this in a series of scenes that move backwards and forwards in time and are punctuated by flashes of light, periods of darkness and retina-teasing images.

The violence, when it finally comes, is well-staged and -acted, but also almost anti-climactic, far less troubling than the thoughts and feelings the production has already aroused. We know that children are killed by parents who think they’ve heard voices far more often than most of us like to think about; we know also that these horrors are ultimately incomprehensible. Yet I couldn’t help wanting more coherence between the evening’s earlier hints and portents and the actual murders, and a greater understanding of the link between Theodore’s religiosity and his killings.

There are elements I just didn’t get. Whenever someone on stage performs – a child dances for the adults or the magician, Carwin, shows off his tricks – the other actors turn and stare at the audience, instead of watching the performer. Why? And the phrase “When people come to look at something, there must be something there for them to look at” is frequently repeated, but I have no idea what it’s supposed to mean.

Yet many of the tricks are brilliant. At one point, Carwin magically creates a pretty, oval image of a garden against the back wall. When Clara approaches to examine it…well, you’ll have to see for yourself. And although the moment doesn’t quite work, I was impressed by the conceptual daring of having the two children play with dolls representing their grandparents, so that what you see is puppets manipulating smaller puppets. The puppet-children are eerily effective throughout. Kate, the little girl, says several times that she’s afraid monsters will suck out her life force through her fingertips. At the moment when she’s about to be killed, the Kate-puppet stretches out her arms to her murderous father. As she does, you see the white gloved hands of the puppeteer above her. It’s a moment of genuine sadness.

Horror: The Transformation places us inside a disintegrating mind. It creates the sense of dislocation you feel waking up in the gray, predawn light, utterly alone, divorced from the habits and distractions that steady your daylight hours, aware that death has stepped one increment nearer and that if your mind starts sliding into oblivion, there’s nothing in the wide, empty universe to stop it.

-Juliet Wittman, November, 3, 2005, Westword

A man with a beard sits on a toilet. He is holding the bathroom door shut and has a defeated expression on his face.

Denver Post- Twin leaps of faith

If you have followed the evolution of Buntport Theater’s collaborative ensemble pieces, all you may recognize in its two mind-expanding new offerings are the faces. That and the familiar feeling of being seduced into unfamiliar worlds.

Buntport never takes the easy way out, nor does it fall back on previous formulas. So simply going along for the ride can be as nerve-wracking for audiences as for the gang of seven who create and perform there. But audiences do so, enthusiastically, because the company has a track record that makes taking the leap of faith asked feel safe.

Leaps of faith are at the core of Buntport’s 16th and 17th creations, the melancholy, fact-based dramas “Realism: The Mythical Brontosaurus,” and the meditative but bloody “Horror: The Transformation,” running in repertory through Dec. 10. The former, more accessible piece follows a young man who has locked himself in his bedroom. The latter, more unsettling tale is a modern take on the farmer who in 1760 listened to voices telling him to kill his family.

Both challenge how it is we come to believe whatever it is we believe to be true. That may mean science, God, evolution, ghosts or even the validity of the love we feel for one another. In the end, we choose the truth that brings us the most comfort. Belief is a leap of faith.

“Realism”

How might it change your perception of reality to learn that scientists have had something wrong all along? Might that cause you to question everything else you have accepted as true? In “Realism,” that’s the plight of Jack, who locks himself safely away after he learns the scientific community has issued a mea culpa: The Brontosaurus never existed. The so-called “nice” dinosaur was discovered and classified in 1879 but later determined to be synonymous with the previously documented Apatosaurus. So in 1974, in a bit of scientific housekeeping, the term “brontosaurus” was formally removed from the scientific record.

Jack, a thoughtful and psychologically fragile young man (Evan Weissman), is now experiencing a profound sense of groundlessness. His isolation has deeply upset his sister Fiona (Erin Rollman), her fiancé, Michael (Brian Colonna) and Jack’s roommate Ben (Erik Edborg), a gay Christian. Far from an absurd comedy, “Realism” is a doleful character study that examines the damage a slight tilt in one person’s axis of reality can have on everyone around him.

There is both a deep sadness and an odd tenderness at the core of “Realism,” Buntport’s first straightforward script. Fiona and Jack share an abusive childhood, and she harbors guilt for fleeing home and leaving him behind. Michael’s homophobia manifests itself against Ben.

This kind of regular acting is new for this extraordinary ensemble – which is why they are trying it now. While Weissman is remarkably natural in the task, the others seem tentative at first. But by the end, Colonna and Edborg have etched complex characterizations, and Rollman emerges as a woman eviscerated in 75 minutes of slow, Beckettesque waiting.

That’s the great irony of “Realism”: This is really pure existentialism, an attempt to portray a convincing illusion of a reality. The play is set on an impressive, two-level house where all the walls have been removed, allowing the audience to see in from both sides. In this story about barriers, the only actual physical barricade is this meager bedroom door. And ultimately, it’s not this door that’s separating these two damaged souls from making a human connection.

“Horror”

The more visually stimulating “Horror” is more recognizable as an experimental Buntport piece. It’s based on the Gothic 1798 novel “Wieland; or The Transformation” by Charles Brockden Brown, generally considered America’s first professional fiction writer. It’s the politely brutal tale of a decent husband and father who is led to destroying his wife and kids by a mysterious agent that may be “ruffian or devil,
black as hell or bright as angels.”

Onstage, the actors all don blackened eyes, as if already dead. Ghosts and memories reveal themselves and, in the coolest twist, the (restored) walls both breathe and bleed. The actors take turns operating puppets representing the two doomed children, both as physical extensions of themselves and later as marionettes. In this story of personal accountability, this is in many ways a puppet show within a puppet show.

Despite its magic, “Horror” is a bit more stilted and likely will be inscrutable to audiences unfamiliar with the source story. Catherine (Rollman) and Colonna (Theodore) are parents who dote on their children and entertain philosophical parlor discussions on skepticism, Socrates, God and reason. But the driving agent here must be the mysterious Carwin (Edborg), who has renounced his birth country and religion. He’s portrayed here as a mere magician and a voice-thrower, not a supernatural force personified capable of driving a man to kill his family. This inevitabile bit of business instead comes along so abruptly it seems more of a tangent than an effective climax.

In this one, backstage wonder Matt Petraglia is the star of the show, navigating more than 100 disturbing sound, light and special-effects cues.

-John Moore, October 28, 2005, Denver Post

A blonde man in a grey sweatshirt, white socks and purple pajama bottoms is sitting up on his knees on a bed and yelling angrily outward and to the right. He is clenching in front of his lap a white flower-patterned blanket. Behind him is a white wall with a partially open double-hung window.

Westword- Beyond Belief

Buntport’s Realism: The Mythical Brontosaurus teases out the truth

The seven founders — and also writer-designer-director-performers — of Buntport Theater are exploring new territory. Known for a prankish and highly literate experimentalism, the team is currently showing Realism: The Mythical Brontosaurus, which, as the title suggests, is pretty much a realistic play. There are no lopped-off limbs here or absurdist twists of plot. No one bursts into song. You won’t see anyone skating on artificial ice. Unlike Buntport’s previous pieces, Realism, though communally written, could be performed by a completely different group of actors.

As always at Buntport, the set is ingenious. The audience is seated on two sides of the cavernous theater space. Between the groups, there’s a structure showing the first and second floors of a house. You can see right through it, and into all the rooms at once — a living room and kitchen on the bottom floor, two bedrooms with a bathroom between them above. It feels a little like peering into a backless dollhouse. When one of the characters opens the kitchen’s gleaming refrigerator, you see that it’s a clutter of cartons, bottles and containers, just like your own and everyone else’s.

On the upper floor, Jack lies on his bed, alternately reading and staring into space. Although he seems calm enough, we soon learn that he’s suffering a crisis of faith centered on the status of the brontosaurus. Jack has just learned that “brontosaurus” isn’t the creature’s rightful scientific name — though brontosauri do, in fact, exist as a taxon, or species group. Furthermore, scientists have been screwing up museum reconstructions of brontosauri for over a century, equipping them with heads far larger than we now believe they possessed. Or would have possessed, if they existed.

Okay, I said Buntport was assaying realism; I didn’t say they were completely abandoning their off kilter worldview.

Into Jack’s house blunders his sister Fiona, with her fiancé, Michael. Once she realizes that Jack is closed in his room, Fiona tries everything in her power to get him out. Michael, meanwhile, just wants to take a dump and is interested only in some quiet time alone in the bathroom. As the play progresses, we begin to understand Fiona’s desperation. She and Jack used to hide from their abusive father together until Fiona, the older of the two, left home, forcing Jack to face the violence alone. She’s particularly concerned because Jack has been suicidal in the past.

Jack isn’t keen on Fiona’s explanation; he finds it intrusive.

His feelings and thoughts, he insists, are his own. Poor Michael is left squirming, and the tension between the siblings threatens to destabilize his relationship with Fiona.

The quartet of performers is rounded out by Ben, Jack’s calm and commonsensical lover, who is far more willing than Fiona to allow Jack to untangle his skein of twisted emotional and philosophical speculation on his own. Ben relaxes with the newspaper and periodically slips tortillas under Jack’s door.

The play touches on heavy themes, but the writing is light, deft, witty and completely lacking in sentimentality. And it turns out the Buntporters are skilled and appealing straight actors. Erin Rollman is just as absorbing to watch as Fiona as when she’s inhabiting the bratty teenage personae that routinely leave Buntport audiences in stitches. She’s very funny here, but she also does full justice to the sadder moments. I’ve always been a fan of Evan Weissman, and his Jack has a dotty, blandly underplayed sincerity that works perfectly. Who’d have guessed how effective Brian Colonna could be as a regular guy? And the usually hyperkinetic Erik Edborg displays his range, too, with a Ben who’s calm, strong and rather kindly.

Of course, Realism boasts moments of complete insanity. This wouldn’t be Buntport otherwise. There’s a running joke about the objects slipped under Jack’s door, which finds its apotheosis when Jack agrees to pass Michael a roll of toilet paper. You really have to see for yourself the touching earnestness and concentration with which the two actors manage this feat.

The question of what’s real and what isn’t keeps raising its non-brontosauran head. Fiona finds her own yearbook picture unrecognizable; her childhood memories differ from Jack’s. There’s talk about the Shroud of Turin, and we learn that Ben is a practicing Christian. Finally, one of the characters arrives at a solution to a world of uncertainty: “I have to believe that what I believe is what I believe.”

-Juliet Wittman, October 20, 2005, Westword