Life > February 28, 2008

By CeCe Brooks | Life editor

It is difficult to imagine what the unimaginable is like. Suffering from a stroke and losing your ability to speak is one such experience that most people couldn’t comprehend. laywright Arthur Kopit tries to do this in Wings.

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Wings, inspired by the stroke of Kopit’s father, attempts to demonstrate the feelings and especially the frustrations stroke victims feel.

The plot basically consists of Mrs. Stilson, played by junior Lauren Gaston, a former pilot who had a stroke and her road to recovery after weeks, maybe months, of confusion and aggravation.

Helping her along the way is a therapist named Amy, played by junior Rebecca Kahane.

Mostly we are taken through Mrs. Stilson’s thoughts and interpretations to what is going on and the occasional glimpses into her life before the stroke.

Although I appreciate the effort and the reasoning behind the play, it was hard for me personally to get into it.

I guess I might be too much of a subscriber to the average movie/play story arc, but the lack of a beefy plotline limited my approval of Wings.

The audience does get some insight into a story, as the play starts out with Mrs. Stilson’s stroke and shows her gradual healing process.

However, the majority of the play is dominated by Mrs. Stilson’s largely nonsensical monologues.

I do applaud Kopit for really illustrating the frustrations stroke patients have when they try to communicate.

Sometimes, however, I got so frustrated I got distracted from the point of it.

Now, going into the university’s production of Wings.

Since I have never seen a different version of Wings I cannot really contrast Director Cindy Gendrich’s interpretation to any other.

From her notes in the program, I can see that Gendrich tried as best she could to emulate what Kopit imagined and what being a stroke victim is really like.

The craziness starts within the first few moments of the play.

In what I suppose to be the illustration of what the stroke looks like to the victim, there is an array of loud noises, large unidentifiable images projected against the wall and multiple people, either medical workers or Mrs. Stilson look-alikes, with Phantom of the Opera-looking masks.

After my initial shock, I began to understand what was happening.

Eventually, I guess as Mrs. Stilson is recovering, the masks are removed and the other characters begin to speak, whether they are other patients or medical workers.

At first, when the masks are on, these other characters seem robotic, uncaring and strange as Mrs. Stilson begins to be able to communicate more efficiently the masks are removed and show many of the characters as kind and caring.

The thing I never really came to understand were the strange audio-visual effects.

As previously stated, there were often unidentifiable images projected onto the back wall in the Ring Theatre.

Maybe if the images were a little more clear (only once or twice was I able to see what the picture was) I might have understood their use, but that just simply wasn’t the case.

Additionally, many times when a character other than Mrs. Stilson was speaking, the actors would be uttering lines while a pre-recorded track of the lines played simultaneously.

Based on my many experiences with theatre and scripts, I was in awe of Lauren Gaston’s performance.

I know it is often hard for an actor to nail a five to 20 minute monologue, so Gaston’s hour and a half presence on stage with little interruption was astounding.

The characters of Amy and Billy, the closest supporting roles, were played by junior Rebecca Kahane and senior Eric Pearce respectively also with great talent.

The other actors were sophomore Danny Mullins, alumna Tiffany Waddell, junior Luke Kohler, sophomore Jenny Malarkey, junior Stephany Rayburn, freshman Lizzy Thomas and junior Mary-Hollis Williams.

Although I may not have personally loved or understood Wings, I cannot cite the performances as a reason.

I simply didn’t identify with the script and the presentation.