Last Friday, I attended The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek with a group from Flora Rose. The performance was top-notch with superb acting. I had no prior experience with playwright Naomi Wallace or her work and the title sounded off-putting because it didn’t give enough information which made it confusing. That said, from the opening scene, the characters drew the audience in with their riveting performances and honest emotional dialogue. The subject matter is deep—centering primarily on the interrelationship of the characters with each other and also with their circumstances, most importantly with the death of someone who knew them all. You get to know the dead fellow through the survivors’ eyes and their expressions of feelings, much more than through narrative description. The way each character copes with the death is important to how they end up dealing with each other. It was billed as “A play about class, violence, and sex in America,” and included all of these aspects, but ultimately was about people dealing with other people. The show was my first Schwartz Center performance, but it won’t be my last. I thank Ashley for including it on the Rose calendar. I look forward to attending more well-produced shows like this one!

The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek was my first play in a very long time. It was a great experience as an introduction theatre. That being said, it was a very interesting experience. I was confused at several points during the play and that could have been because I am not very familiar theatrical works. The content of the play was very shocking and there were quite a few parts where I was both blushing and laughing at the actors. The play was very much this coming-of-age story which explored how different kinds of relationships work as well as depicting how life in the 1930’s was like. Although the play did not try to portray how awful the conditions were, the mind-frame and thought process of workers during that time was particularly well illustrated by Dalton’s father. It’s amazing how the use of light during the play echoed the depression and sadness of the father and his crumbling relationship with Gin, Dalton’s mother. The man took it as a personal offense that he was fired from his job and he is unemployed. His relationship with Dalton and Gin becomes weaker and weaker as continues on his trek downwards. Also, his cathartic hobby of breaking plates was something I did not quite understand. There was one point where Gin mentioned she had to dig through the dump for fresh plates for her husband to break and, perhaps, they should should just start eating the plates. At some point in the play, Cindy and I looked at each other and whispered,”there’s plates on the set”. There were, in fact, glass plates stacked to stabilize the set which, in retrospect, could have been symbolic for something. However, it may also be that Cindy and I were overanalyzing the situation. I really enjoyed the play even if I did not quite understand and I hope we have more opportunities to do something like this.

This past Friday I went to watch Trestle at Pope Lick Creek with SA Ashley. While I’m not really what you would consider a theatre enthusiast, but in high school I did enjoy the drama productions that the drama department puts up. I think the Cornell PMA production of Trestle at Pope Lick Creek is very high quality, and it was really amazing to sit through the play and see the amount of work put into everything, from the set, to the acting, to the lights and artistry all around.

There are several things in the play that stood out to me. The first is how much drama and “extra” substance the actors had put into their acting. Everything is exaggerated, and though initially it was a little bit jarring (for example, did they really have to speak that loudly?), I think it’s very conventional for the actors to exaggerate their voices, expressions, and actions, especially in a play, and especially in a room of the size at Schwartz. I will say that it added to the drama, and it’s admirable how that level of energy and drama was sustained throughout the two hour long play.

Another thing that really stood out to me was the set. I thought it was really beautifully designed. The set consisted of four large wooden panels, two in the middle, one on the far left, and one one the far right. In addition, there were two large railroad trestle beams framing the two middle wooden panels. Each panel also has the trestle pattern painted on, and instead of it all standing completely upright, each panel was actually slanted a little bit–though each panel is perfectly rectangular, one edge of it would be balanced on a stack of plates. I think a lot of thought was put into the set design, and I think the addition of the stack of plates is indicative of that. For one, it adds detail, and for another, it could symbolize the uncertainty of the time period the play was set in, and it could symbolize instability that the characters felt.

The final thing that really stood out to me was the plot. I think for the most part, it felt incomplete. The ending didn’t feel abrupt by any means, but at the same time, it leaves the audience with a little bit of a question mark at the end. This makes me wonder whether or not that was exactly the playwright’s intention–perhaps that’s the message she wanted to portray about that time in history, or about life.

Overall, though, it was a very enjoyable play and I think it’s amazing how much work and effort was put into a production like this.

I am currently enrolled in PMA 2800: Introduction to Acting. And while I enjoyed the play for what it was, the things I have been learning in the course allowed me to view the events from an alternate perspective. One of the things we learned recently is considering all of the things that motivate a character, his wants and needs. Unlike real life, things that occur in a play do not just happen, nor are any of them disconnected. Anything that happens is specific and advances the plot in some way. We refer to these as triggers, intrusions in the stasis of the character(s). Considering the circumstances in which the character finds him/herself, and how the character goes about achieving the goal(s) is necessary to understanding the play as a whole. In this case, perhaps the greatest motivator for the characters is the Great Depression. With that said, no one in the play comes out and says, “Gee, this sucks. We’re in the Great Depression”. It’s simply the reality of their circumstance, and they must all deal with it in their respective ways.

The characters all find themselves in different “pits”, with seemingly no way out. For the mother, the pit is her deteriorating marriage and her inability to provide a better future for her son. For the father, it is his inability to find a job, as very few people are being hired. For the children, the prospect of going to college or making something more of themselves is a distant possibility. No one expects anything from them; they’re effectively dead in the water with no future ahead of them. It is only by playing with death (literally playing chicken with the giant train that comes through) that they can feel alive. The sense of hopelessness and the desperate struggle to survive came across through the actors’ performances. Like the line from Bob Dylan (perhaps more popularized by Jimi Hendrix), there is a pervading sentiment that there must be some way out of here. And all of the characters are trying to find it.

“Trestle at Pope Lick Creek” is a play with a cast of only five onstage members.  I don’t watch or read that many plays but those which I have read, like “Death of a Salesman” or “Hamlet” have had a much larger cast.  It was refreshing to see the same faces undergo many different scenarios.  While all five characters were quite different from each other, their long run time gave them all a chance to experience and express feelings from many corners of the emotional spectrum.  Overall I liked the acting.  The majority of the character’s reactions were intense throughout the play.  The story is set around the Great Depression Era and seeing consistently high energy acting sometimes made me feel like it was a bit much and like I was worn down.  That kind of allowed me to see and also feel the stress and conviction the characters had.  There were some more subtle expressions, and a lot of them I found humorous.  Other reoccurring gags seemed flat out strange, such as a prison guard constantly doing charade-type motions and asking a prisoner to guess what he was supposed to be acting out.  Even a more unconventional action like the one described contributed to the overall story.  The Depression brings with it uncertainty and instability for the characters, and they are forced to try to identify what kind of state financially and emotionally they are in, states that themselves change with every failed job opportunity or every missed action of affection.  The very ending, which I refuse to spoil, was weird and definitely made me think.