MADISON, Wis. — After being delayed by the pandemic for two years, a new play coming to Madison’s Bartell Theatre Friday focuses on gender fluidity and a family going through changes.
“It’s absurdist realism,” said Julia Houck, director of “HIR.” It runs from Jan. 20th-Feb. 4th. Proof of vaccination is required to get in.
“The moments when you really learn from the play you’re laughing along with the family — and something tragic happens, and you realize that you’ve been laughing,” Houck said, “and so it really causes you to stop and take in what’s occurring here.”
Pronounced “here,” “HIR” is the preferred gender pronoun of son Max, played by Abi Hindle, who’s transitioning from female to male.
Max’s abusive father Arnold is “not all there” while recovering from a stroke — which means Max and his wife Paige are experiencing “wokeness” and freedom after 25 years of pain from Arnold.
“Everybody sort of became their own person when they were no longer afraid and so that’s a big portion of what the change is,” Houck said.
But on the one day we get to sit with the family, not everyone is on board with the change.
“Isaac is so confrontational, so controlling, wants perfect definitions of things,” said actor Riz Moe.
Moe plays Isaac, the family’s son who comes back home from three years at war after being dishonorably discharged due to a meth addiction.
“At least in the beginning, Isaac has the viewpoint of the audience about trying to understand what’s happening, saying it’s gone a little too far trying to get just control over it,” Moe said.
“Isaac is a little thunderstruck over and over and over again,” Houck said.
The way Julie Houck came to direct the play was a little surprise too.
After being delayed two years due to COVID-19, the original director stepped away. But Houck was hooked when she read the script. “I grew up in 1970s Richland County which is very conservative, as a lesbian,” Houck said.
“So Max is coming out and Max is going through all sorts of things trying to get people to understand, that’s why it resonated with me, it just speaks to what that challenge is like.”
The family’s “starter home” set was designed by Teresa Sarkela and Michelle Dayton. “From the audience, we see that it’s in complete disarray,” producer Scott Albert Bennett said. “And you have to wonder what’s happened to this family to get them to this point.”
But Moe says the audience may stop questioning soon into the play – and they shouldn’t be completely sold on seeing things through Isaac’s lens.
“I think the audience might find they’ll lose touch with him as they get a sense of what his ideals are, about the baggage that he’s carrying,” Moe said. “Then they’ll have to sort of figure out for themselves when then who’s perspective am I supposed to follow then?”
“You see that it’s not really a battle against each other it’s really trying to understand and come to sort of empathy,” he said.
But Houck says that can only happen by watching it play out in person. “In order for community theater to continue to thrive as it has in the past, we need the audience back.”
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