Steps To The Stage
Steps To The Stage
Savage in Limbo: 3 on the Edge Festival
Regret, change, and the peculiar state of limbo take center stage in our riveting conversation with the cast and director of "Savage in Limbo," part of Chino Community Theatre's Three on the Edge Festival. This John Patrick Shanley one-act transports audiences to a seedy Bronx bar circa 1984, where five characters who've known each other since grade school find their lives unexpectedly intersecting on a quiet Monday night.
Director Michelle Knight-Reinhart and her talented cast—Alex Huey (Denise Savage), Bodhi Aguirre (Tony Aronica), and Rafael Ortega (Merc)—delve into Shanley's distinctive writing style and the raw humanity of their characters. Known for works like "Doubt," "Danny and the Deep Blue Sea," and "Moonstruck," Shanley creates painfully honest dialogue that explores the human condition through the lens of working-class New York characters yearning for connection and change.
What makes this production particularly fascinating is how it balances gritty realism with moments of unexpected humor. The laughter often emerges from uncomfortable situations and self-inflicted problems as characters desperately try to change their circumstances while simultaneously resisting transformation. As one cast member notes, perhaps "limbo" isn't just a temporary state but the constant in all our lives—we're perpetually wondering if something better awaits us while remaining stuck in our patterns. The production embraces its 1980s setting with period-appropriate costumes and creates an immersive bar environment where drinks mysteriously appear without being mixed, adding an intriguing theatrical element that mirrors the reliability and steadfastness of Merc's character.
Don't miss this powerful exploration of human connection running May 9-24 as part of the Three on the Edge Festival, which also features "Breathing Corpses" and "Bending the Spoon." All three productions contain mature themes and strong language, offering audiences a thought-provoking theatrical experience. If you're buying tickets for one show, consider attending all three in repertory to experience the full range of this compelling festival.
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Welcome to Steps to the Stage. A 7th Street Community Theatre podcast.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to Steps to the Stage, the community theatre podcast, where we talk to the theatre professionals you know and love. I'm Marlee, and today we're covering Chino Community Theatre's Three on the Edge Festival, featuring Breathing Corpses, Savage in Limbo and Bending the Spoon. Edge Festival featuring Breathing Corpses, savage in Limbo and Bending the Spoon. Today I have Savage in Limbo cast and director with me, so if everyone could just introduce themselves and say what role you are in the show.
Speaker 3:I'll start. I'm Michelle Knight-Reinhart. I am the director of Savage in Limbo.
Speaker 4:I'm Alex Huey and I will be playing Denise Savage.
Speaker 5:I'm Bodhi Aguirre and I'll be playing Tony Aronica. I'm Rafael Ortega and I'll be playing Denise Savage. I'm Bodhi Aguirre and I'll be playing Tony Aronica.
Speaker 6:I'm Rafael Ortega and I'll be playing Merc.
Speaker 2:Merc, I love it. Okay, so just starting off for our director, can you just give a short little synopsis of the play and what everyone's going to see without giving too much away?
Speaker 3:To kind of steal from the back of the script. It takes place in a seedy-ish bar in the Bronx circa 1984. These are five people who have known each other kind of peripherally, maybe a little more personally, a couple of them through since grade school. They all went to St Anthony's, they're all grew up in the same Bronx neighborhood and they all kind of find themselves in this bar on a Monday night and it's kind of dead and their lives kind of intersect. So that would be. It's just that slice of life. It's a one act. It's a long one act Runs about 80-ish, 80 to 90 minutes. Amazing 80 to 90 minutes.
Speaker 2:Amazing and just like starting off for our director perspective. What kind of drew you to the play and why did you want to see it on the stage?
Speaker 3:Well, when I was in college, this play Linda one of the characters in the play she has this monologue that was done all the time by women, young women, in college. It was a very popular monologue of the time in the in the 90s. And then John Patrick Shanley I like his work. He wrote Doubt, he wrote Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, yeah, and he wrote the screenplay to Moonstruck, and so I'm a fan of his work as well. So I was drawn to him as a playwright and the characters are just, and the more you talk about it, like with most well-written things, there's so many things that are in the subtext there that you're pulling those threads I like to call it pulling the threads of the material, because you know well what does that unravel and what does that unravel the material, because you know well what does that unravel and what does that unravel. And so I think that they've been doing their work and they've been revealing a lot of things about the characters that I think they've built into their, their characters.
Speaker 2:Amazing. And then, from the actor perspective, how did any of you feel when you first read it or first started working with it? Is it with this play I've been familiar with?
Speaker 6:sorry, I've been familiar with Shanley for a bit.
Speaker 6:I came across him through like a really it wasn't a one act, but it was a short play called Dreamer Examines His Pillow and yeah, he's just such a like gritty I wouldn't say that, but I guess, yeah, for lack of a better term, gritty writer, I mean it's just that bleeds over. That grittiness bleeds over into all his work. You know, and it's just so fun listening to these people and their, their, their humor. They're like he always kind of writes from the lens of someone in that time, like New York. It's such an interesting little reflection of where he came from and you see that. So I mean this is just another instance of that, and I mean getting to work on Shanley. The invitations just sort of popped up and I was like I have to do one Shanley play. Yeah, you know, it's yeah.
Speaker 2:Amazing yeah, anybody else act perspective.
Speaker 5:I had a lot of fun working on this play. When I was reading lines with friends, one of my friends was like oh, this is a really good character. Let's see if you can have a lot of fun with this one. He's really just like mouthy and loud, but there's something lovable about him. I'm probably going off on a tangent here from your original question.
Speaker 5:No, you're good Go ahead, but I really wanted to address the context of the play itself. I think a lot of it has to do with regret. From my perspective, I think, um, oftentimes, when I'm with people who are younger, they're like, oh, you can't regret anything because you wouldn't be where you are today, and I'm like, sometimes I hate where I am. So regret is definitely part of of growing up, like you definitely have to um acknowledge that it happens and is part of the experience of life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, amazing Alex, you have any.
Speaker 4:The biggest thing I want to add is just in Shanley's writing, just how honest it is and the way he delves into the human condition as a whole is very unique, yeah, and special.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that we kind of talked about in our conversation with Breathing Corpses like something real, but also like dark and comedy. So it's just been interesting, like how all these plays explore like humanity more. Like how does it feel because there is some comedy elements, right, yes, how does it feel kind of exploring acting and directing comedy, but also like real things going on and there is like a dark undertone. So so like how's that been in the process for everybody?
Speaker 5:I've almost broken up a couple of times during rehearsal, like I crack a smile and it's very much like that Saturday night live, like cracking, like character and just like. Okay, this is, this is funny. But it's also like we're trying to hold it together at some points and it's it's interesting to see that.
Speaker 4:Sometimes it's funny because it's not funny Uncomfortable. It's interesting to see that Sometimes it's funny because it's not funny.
Speaker 3:Exactly In that dark corner. Uncomfortable laughter.
Speaker 6:Yes, like you shouldn't be laughing. You know you do, there's a.
Speaker 3:I think Merc has a lot of, even though it's not intentional. But he has a lot of the comic relief because his character is so straightforward all the time. He doesn't say things to be funny but as you view them as the audience, they're pretty funny. And you think, is that really? I never thought of it that way. He has a really good line about people wonder why it's happening. They do something and they wonder why it's happening. It's happening because they're doing it. So you know that whole, like she said, human condition of like, well, why is this happening to me? You know, like the guy who has the same thing for lunch every day and he complains and he says who packs your lunch? And he says I do. So you know things happen because you do them to yourself.
Speaker 3:And Denise Savage, the savage who is in limbo and, uh, she, you know they people give her choices at one point in the play and she doesn't want them, even though she wants to change. She wants change. That's a huge thing that she wants, but she doesn't want to do anything to change except talk about it Sort of.
Speaker 6:Yeah, if I could interject. I think that's also kind of why the humor pops up is because so many of the decisions that these characters make they're kind of self-wrought. Like you were saying that the play deals a lot with regret, it deals with regret in the sense that these people are so fed up with their lives, they're fed up with where they're at Maybe not all the characters but, like I'm going to say, 90% of characters. That's not a way to what do you call it? Yeah, but most of the characters deal with regret in that sense and it's funny what they do in order to try to ameliorate the regret, or like where they take off from, like how they, how they proceed from that point of regret. That's what's so funny. It's like what, what? That's what you're going to do next.
Speaker 6:You know it's yeah, like there's and there's so many instances where these people are trying to mull over their decisions in in the course of the play with this audience of people in this bar, and that's hilarious. That's a hilarious thing to see people trying to change their lives in front of people in a bar of all settings yeah, yeah just where most people would probably try to change their lives. It's true, but it's yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I was talking about the play and the themes with someone today, as a matter of fact, and she was saying well, isn't limbo kind of the constant? Like, we think about limbo as being something, but really aren't we all kind of always in kind of a limbo, about limbo as being something? But really aren't we all kind of always in kind of a limbo? You know, even if we have a routine or whatever we we're, we always feel like there might be something else out there. So puts us, so it's the constant, which I thought was a really interesting concept of limbo being the constant in your life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is very interesting, and then it's also hard because I feel like so much is act of acting is based on like what does the character want, like how do we get there, and then if all these characters are kind of stuck, you know like it's probably an interesting like process. Yeah, what's been like the best like have you had like a most challenging like acting moment, just in like one setting? Like you have to be witty and dark. How's that been the process for you guys? You have to be witty and dark.
Speaker 5:How's that been the process for you guys? Well, the most complex part of my character is probably just his quick talk. He's a very, very fast-paced, very New York-talking guy and trying to find my beats in those moments and trying to find those pauses and give him almost that fully realized human, uh quality. You know, cause oftentimes we see people from New York.
Speaker 5:I'm from New York, I'm originally from upstate New York and it was really easy to kind of slip into that role for me, but I think it's also in in in some in some ways, but, um, I think what that that quick pace sort of thing could often be like, um, a caricature, but it's, it's not like it's definitely part of the, of the, of the, of the seam, of, of, of a lot of these people, um, that that are from from that area, from New York. It's very, just like quick pace. And I often tell people all the time like I feel annoying, living in California when I talk to my friends and stuff, cause I'm constantly screaming and yelling and that was my dinner table, like that was my conversation, like I had to be heard by my family, so I had to constantly scream over everyone and talk loud and just like be that animated person, just to exist in my family even.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, anybody else Part of your process, something challenging or something like a good moment? I?
Speaker 4:think Denise has a couple of monologues, a couple of very long monologues in the show and both of those I found interesting challenges, both in different ways, because just the way she expresses herself, she's trying to communicate something very deep and the way she goes about it is part of where the humor comes from her because it comes across very uniquely, because I don't want to give too much away.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes.
Speaker 4:But just finding that, where that all of that is coming from, from her, to make her human and not just a caricature, like we said. Yeah, but really finding those human elements but allowing the humor to come through, because she's just a caricature, like we said, but really finding those human elements but allowing the humor to come through because she's just really trying to, she's trying to build a connection, she's trying to do make, make change and, you know, move, move her life forward in ways that just don't happen, because because reasons.
Speaker 4:Because it doesn't happen. Because it doesn't happen, yep.
Speaker 6:Can I also add on yeah, so many of these people, they have so many idiosyncrasies, like they're so particular, and you see that in New York, you see this giant diversity of people and they're all just in this small place and you get a glimpse into all these very like different lives, and I think you know there's something to that, like we, we get to work on all these, we get to figure out these particulars that are inherent to the character, these these very eccentric, eclectic mix of characters. It's yeah, I think I'm a little thrown out there.
Speaker 2:No, you just exactly yeah.
Speaker 3:I think another really interesting thing for me about the show is the different energies that the different characters bring into the show. Because it starts out and you have just Merc and April on the stage already they're there and they have kind of this calm, easygoing, just simple energy. And then Denise bursts in and she's got and she even says one of her first lines is I've got energy, so she brings it up. And then Linda comes in and she brings a different energy because she's got a different energy of she's upset. And Denise is kind of frantic, not really upset, she's just frantic because she's looking for something exciting, even though it's a Monday night, you know.
Speaker 3:And then Tony comes on and he has this other burst of energy because he's had this epiphany and he wants everyone to know and he wants to explain, know, and he wants to explain himself and have them understand and tell him, yes, yes, you can make a change and you can do great things, you know. So it's all of them kind of maneuvering and trying to bring the energy up or pull the energy down. And you have like Merc's character who kind of wants things to be. It's his bar, he has a certain way, he likes things to be and he wants to keep the energy here and so having different energies come in kind of throw him off.
Speaker 2:You know kind of, yeah, yeah, interesting, rhythm breaks and changes and things Very interesting and then also just having it all be in a bar is really interesting. So how's like from the production side, like setting costumes, is anyone doing some accents Like, how has the production, the design kind of like helped you with the show?
Speaker 3:Yeah, some of them are doing accents and we looked up like and boroughs in New York we found is something interesting because it's not necessarily specific to a borough, but more the ethnic makeup or your family You're. You know not necessarily that borough Like. There's not necessarily a huge difference between a Bronx and a Brooklyn and a Staten Island depending on if you are Italian or Jewish or Polish or what your ethnic background is and stuff.
Speaker 3:So there's some accents and then there's some as far as the costuming, we do 80s, so like biggish hair for the ladies.
Speaker 2:Colorful, colorful.
Speaker 4:Very cool.
Speaker 2:Leather pants for Tony. Yes, leather pants leather pants.
Speaker 3:So yeah, so that should add to the, to the colors of the character um. And then an interesting thing about um it being in a bar is that, uh, I guess this. I guess people notice this right away, but Merck never really mixes drinks. They just kind of appear Interesting. It's like do they just know who's coming in and what they're going to order? And then I thought about that, metaphorically I guess, or maybe realistically how often do you notice your bartender mixing your drink when you order it?
Speaker 3:That's so true, you don't always you order it and you turn and you are distracted, and then suddenly it appears and you assume they mixed it, you know which you don't really know. It's there, it's there, it's what I ordered. So, yeah, I mean, sometimes you watch and sometimes it's a thing, it's a show thing, but he's not a showy kind of guy, so he would just, you know, I imagine that he would quietly mix it and then hand it to you, and so it's kind of a revealing thing about Merck is that it just appears because he seems reliable, he's like solid and he likes things to be how he likes them. He's like solid and he likes things to be how he likes them, and so for him not to make a big fuss about mixing drinks is kind of metaphorical to Merck, I think.
Speaker 6:Reading it the first time I actually thought it was kind of like an absurdist thing. You know, it's just the way it's mentioned in the script. It's just like he doesn't prepare drinks, they just pop up from behind the bar, he puts them on the thing and hearing this take it's interesting because, considering the themes of the play, you start to see like there is this layer of almost like expectation, like he knows what each person might be ordered or what is what people most likely order.
Speaker 6:It's a it's a whole headache to try to get into why that's the mechanic you know, but it's just one of those little interesting things you know, yeah, I love that Kind of like.
Speaker 2:It's like realistic. There's like a weird like semi not naturalist sort of thing going on.
Speaker 4:It's also been interesting having to really pay attention more than I've ever experienced before, of being aware of where my drink sat in the room the whole time during the show. Yes, very true, it's become an additional element of the character as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow, like different weird things part of your process.
Speaker 3:you have to think about yeah, yeah, there's a. In fact, we just were, because there's things that are kind of repetitive as far as lines or actions. So we were kind of doing it was almost a noises off kind of moment where it's like no order the drink, leave the drink on the bar, walk away. Oh no, this time you have to take the drink and leave it on the table. So it's just funny, yeah, because they have to have it and it has to be there for him to use later or whatever.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Well, this has been an amazing conversation, guys. As we wrap up, can everyone like if you were to sell the word in one word, one word you just give me one word, we'll go down the line.
Speaker 5:You could be like oh, someone to be intrigued to watch this play over here? Uh, probably, uh, flabbergasted I like that word, I just like I'm throwing out a big word there, the word that I probably isn't even in the dictionary. I don't know.
Speaker 2:No, it is, is it?
Speaker 5:It's a real word. Yeah, it's a real word, okay, cool.
Speaker 6:I'll go hyphenated word if this is even it's allowed Dead plant, dead plant, okay, dead plants. I stick to my guns. Perfect Dead plants.
Speaker 3:Epiphanies.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, that's good.
Speaker 4:Connection and understanding.
Speaker 6:I like that. We ended on that note.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 6:As opposed to dead plants.
Speaker 2:All right, amazing. So what days is Savage and Limbo performing.
Speaker 3:We open on Friday May 9th and then we have a performance on Sunday May 11th, so bring your mom. Saturday May 17th we have a matinee, and then Thursday May 22nd and Saturday May 24th at 7.30 pm we have shows. So we have a total of five.
Speaker 2:Well, amazing, it sounds amazing and interesting. So thank you everyone for chatting with me today.
Speaker 3:And there's also Breathing Corpses and Bending the Spoon that are also part of the festival, and all of them have the Mature Audience Warning because they all contain strong language and themes.
Speaker 2:Yes, they should all be amazing. All in rep with each other. Mature audience warning, because they all contain strong language and themes and mature themes. All in rep with each other, so catch all of them. If you're going to buy tickets for one, buy them for all. Yes, thank you so much everybody, Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to Steps to the Stage a 7th Street Community Theatre podcast. Follow us on your favorite podcast platform and leave us a review and a five-star rating. It really helps. You can also find us on Instagram, facebook and YouTube. Special thanks to Chino Community Theatre and Chino Community Children's Theatre for their generous support and very special thank you to the listeners. Logo created by Marley Lane. Original music by Joey Rice your host, marley Lane. Engineer and producer Joey Rice. Engineer and executive producer Kirk Lane.
