Empanada Loca (Aaron Mark)
So, Pronoia is about comedy, fairly explicitly. I personally think it is the best form of presentation to build empathy and to get people to think about things in a new way. I’ve had enough conversations to know that this is far from a universal opinion, and that many people (I’m looking at Q and Chelsea Curto most specifically,) don’t, for lack of a better word, find inherent value in comedy. It’s not their thing, and they wouldn’t usually seek it out.
I disagree, of course, but more than that I cannot get a handle on their thought pattern: why wouldn’t they like comedy? It’s self-evidently the best. But the world doesn’t make sense and that’s why we have to make fun of it.
I bring this up, because I have a similar blindspot: One-person shows. I’ve seen a few, I’ve read a lot, and I don’t connect with them, almost universally.
Aaron Mark’s Empanada Loca, therefore, had its work cut out for it, and so it perhaps shouldn’t be counted against it that I this one-woman modern retelling of Sweeny Todd didn’t hit for me.
The play is told by Dolores, a once-promising woman who got dealt a few bad blows and ended up being written off by the world. Since this is a Sweeny Todd story you can bet she eventually kills someone and then enters into a plot to serve that meat to people (this time in the form of empanadas.)
The script takes a long while to get to the main event, so to speak, so we have a lot of time with Dolores to understand how she got to that critical point, and to wonder about how she got to where we’re hearing her story.
As a Producer
This isn’t likely the sort of show Pronoia would produce. Despite it being well-written and engaging, I didn’t connect with it, it has a kind of pessimism that I don’t think fits well within our aesthetic, and the only reason to do this show is to showcase the performing actress, and we don’t have a person right for this role.
I like trying to guess what kind of theater would want to do this show, but it’s already been done! In 2019 Houston’s Obsidian was our city’s premiere (as far as I know) of this particular work.
Briana Resa in a Houston production of Empanada Loca, circa 2019
As a Designer
The playwright goes out of his way to say that design shouldn’t feature much in this production. He doesn’t want costume changes, lighting shifts, or sound. I could have an aside as to whether I think a playwright should make that kind of request in a print edition, but instead I’ll focus on why: he wants to fully ground the play in the reality of what Dolores is experiencing. Unlike Lauren Gunderson’s Natural Shocks, Dolores isn’t talking to us, the audience, she’s talking to someone in the room with her, she’s telling a story, and he doesn’t want to take the audience out of that place and time.
As a Writer
I didn’t know Aaron Mark’s name before two weeks ago and now I’ve read two of his plays, and apparently he works in Houston a bit? I really need to get out more. Based on these two plays I am highly interested in reading more.
For a story I wasn’t particularly interested in, with a main character I didn’t particularly like, I did read the whole story in close to one sitting and was never tempted to give up on it. That’s the power of voice, I think. In real life I can talk to someone for hours about something I’m not interested in, if they’re passionate about it. Here, there’s someone who feels like a real person telling her life story, and although I don’t love it, I’m not going to look away. I don’t know how to capture that, but it is something I’ll think about for awhile.
He’s still great at images, and I’m still not. One of the few stage pieces is an out-of-place massage table, and if I were sitting in the audience, watching nothing but this actress and seeing nothing but this table, that would provoke a strong question in me. The end of the play features a sudden, gruesome image similar to what Mark did full-length in Deer which I imagine would have a similar arresting quality.
