One Flea Spare
The Balagula Theatre Company opens the 2011-2012 Season Thursday, September 1, 2011 with One Flea Spare by Naomi Wallace. One Flea Spare had its American Premiere at the 1996 Humana Festival of New Plays in Louisville, KY. Wallace, a native of Prospect, KY now residing in England, will attend Balagula Theatre Company’s production of One Flea Spare. Wallace is judging the Kentucky Women Writers Conference Playwriting Competition and Balagula Theatre Company will produce the winning play from the KWWC Playwriting Competition.
One Flea Spare received the 1997 Obie Award for Best Play, among other notable awards, and has been successfully produced in the United States and worldwide. The French National Theatre, Comedie-Francaise, permanently incorporated this play into their repertoire in 2009. Wallace is the second and only living American playwright to achieve this honor in the 300 year history of this theatre, putting her in the company of Tennessee Williams.
“We see bringing the best of international theatre to Central Kentucky audiences as a part of our mission,” said Ryan Case, Artistic and Managing Co-Director for Balagula Theatre Company. “It is especially important for us to know and honor the contribution of our fellow Kentuckians to world theatre.”
Case is also the producer of One Flea Spare. Natasha Williams, Artistic and Managing Co-Director of Balagula Theatre Company, is directing the play.
“This production is dedicated to the female playwrights,” said Williams. “We have been working with KWWC to bring more attention to the issue of gender discrimination in the theatre; where women playwrights are still treated as inferior to male writers. Ms. Wallace’s success is a great example of the significance and power of women’s voices on stage.”
LexArts has provided funding support for Balagula Theatre Company’s 2011-2012 Season through its Funds for the Arts. The Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency provides operating support to The Balagula Theatre Company with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. The media sponsor for the season is WUKY. One Flea Spare is sponsored by Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau. Pay What You Can Performance sponsored by Central Bank and Southern Tent and Awning Company. Worlds Apart and the Lexington Arts Academy are Balagula’s “Deliver the Arts” sponsors. Throughout the run of One Flea Spare art by Christine Kuhn, inspired by the script of “One Flea Spare” will be on display.
Balagula Theatre Company continues their tradition of partnering with local non-profit organizations in an effort to raise awareness for both the theatre and the partnering organizations. These non-profits are chosen based on their mission and the impact they strive to achieve in the community. Balagula Theatre Company donates a portion of their ticket sales to the partners. For reservations call Natasha’s Bistro at 859-259-2754 or visit www.beetnik.com.
THE FACTS
One Flea Spare by Naomi Wallace
Directed by: Natasha Williams
September 1-4, 11-14 (Dinner seating 6:15-7:15 / Curtains at 8pm)
Ticket Price: Adults $15/Students $10
Reservations call 859-259-2754 or visit www.beetnik.com
About The Play
This award winning play set in plague ravaged 17th Century London opens with a wealthy couple preparing to flee when a mysterious sailor and a young girl sneak into their boarded up home. Now quarantined for 28 days, the only thing these strangers fear more than the plague is each other. Definitions of morality are up for grabs and survival takes many forms in this dark, fiercely intense and humorous play. One Flea Spare deals with the theme of humanity in the face of all equalizing disaster, a theme that echoes modern natural and man-made catastrophic events.
“One Flea Spare is built to provoke, not to distract, and it doesn't surrender its meanings easily. But the play's powerful sexual subtext and its beautiful poetic surface reveal an original theatrical imagination,” John Lahr, The New Yorker
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Having read the script in English and in French, I agreed with the comment of John Lahr- The New-Yorker- : "it doesn 't surrender its meanings easily. But the play's powerful sexual subtext and its beautiful poetic suface reveal an original theatrical imagination ".
I looked forward to seeing the show ; I must confess that I was a little worrying about some moments that could be coarse : sex , piss, plague, death : those moments and all the play is treated with a very clever delicacy. The use of a transluscent screen in which a window is cut out, is very intelligent.
All the actors are ecxellent. As for Morse ,on reading, I had questions about her role :was she cynical ? Bethany Finley is a little more than twelve but looks so slender, so young , with her sweet voice , sweet attitudes , her pretty face ; it is pleasant and easy to see in her character not only a simple witness but a hope in the future, a naíve , fresh and independant way to understand and adapt to what can happen in life : a sweety "flea " indeed and much more !
The music is soft , precious, pefectly chosen,
The costumes are beautiful, a pleasure for the eyes in their colors, their materials,
Thanks to this wonderful staging by Natasha, the Director, I can say , now : I have understood " more easily the meanings of this play ", and spent a delightful poetic evening that I shall remember !
So, thousand thanks and congratulations to Naomi Wallace and to all the team around Natasha Williams at Balagula Theater.