Spring drama preview: Lisa Kron’s Well

By Ilona Meilekh

The annual spring play will be performed at Bethel between April 24th and April 26th. This time John McCabe-Juhnke, professor of communication arts at Bethel and the play’s director, chose a comedy named Well by Lisa Kron.

“I’ve been the director of the spring drama for a number of years now and I’ve done very heavy pieces. I saw a scene of this one in a forensics tournament last year and thought it was very clever and funny,” said McCabe-Juhnke.

What is special about this play is that it belongs to a sub-genre called meta-theatre. Meta-theatre explores the process of staging plays and the difficulties involved in it.

“It’s a comedy about a performance artist who has put together a theatrical exploration related to the issues of sickness and wellness,” said McCabe-Juhnke.
The main character in the play shares its name with the author of the play--she is simply named Lisa Kron. To play her role, McCabe-Juhnke chose Caitlin Buerge, a senior from Kansas City.

Buerge’s character is a 50-year-old woman whose attempts to stage a play are constantly interrupted by her mother’s intervention. It turns out that the mother and the daughter have many unsolved issues they have to work on.

“I really like Lisa because of her complex relationship with her mother. As young women, I think we all have complex relationships with our mothers,” said Buerge.

As part of participating in a meta-theatrical play, Buerge has to play two characters: Lisa herself and Lisa’s character in the play she’s staging.

“I found her immensely challenging because she has to jump very often from playing in the play to playing herself,” said Buerge.

Other actors play members of an ensemble whom Lisa collected to perform her play. One of those members is Aimee Siebert, a junior from Topeka.

“There are moments when the members of the ensemble have to play themselves. Where the play within the play gets interrupted and we have to stand there reacting to things as if what happening on stage was happening to us in real life and that is actually a lot harder than it sounds,” said Siebert.

“It’s really difficult to play yourself on stage and to be so real that people in the audience won’t doubt that you are being you. Especially in an environment like Bethel because a lot of people will know the people on stage and how they are in real life,” said Buerge.

“I think people should come and see the play. The play is interesting in the way it doesn’t look like other plays, and I think the audience would be surprised how it resolves itself. There continue to be unexpected turns all the way throughout as people drop character and intervene,” said McCabe-Juhnke.