Eric emanuel shorts4/15/2023 WAKE is a powerful reminder a recognition that the ghosts of the AIDS crisis are still present and still active. Exorcizing these ghosts is difficult and takes time and distance – the time and distance offered in anagnorisis. Much more significant are the ghosts of history and trauma–and the continuing impact of their separate past on their present relationship. Dan and Eric’s relationship is haunted, but ghosts are only a surface level problem. Each of the podcasts explore a story of haunting and personal pain. He explores the haunting of history, of experience, and of one’s own past as impacts the present of his characters. Through a clever story-telling device introduced at the beginning of the play, Gatton is able to explore the depth of haunting that goes beyond a simple super-natural presence. It is the embodiment of haunting–of being haunted. The ghost story in WAKE is not simply a matter of spirits and the super-natural. And, while that description is true enough on the surface, it fails to reveal the depth of meaning present in the term. Vince Gatton describes his play WAKE as a ghost story for a post-AIDS generation. The theatre carries a responsibility to continue to tell these stories and Vince Gatton’s WAKE is a solid and important contribution to understanding the trauma of the AIDS crisis. Often the role of art, at least of theatrical art, is to focus and (re)focus the recognition–the anagnorisis– of past events in an effort to heal and to remember. Memory provides a lens by which one can focus on particular details that time reveals time and distance. 40+ years later, we are starting to recognize the depth and breadth of the trauma left by this crisis and we continue to discover the ways that we must heal. Misinformation, misunderstanding, and mortal fear shaped an entire generation and forced activism and change into an uncomfortable spotlight. One of the traumas of my generation, and perhaps other generations as well, is the AIDS crisis of the early 1980’s. You can catch him being himself on a certain re-run of Jeopardy, in the documentary Married and Counting, and in the Pippin episode of Encore on Disney+. He’s also cropped up on TV on BLUE BLOODS and LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME. Vince was a founding Board Member of New York Shakespeare Exchange, with whom he’s appeared in King John, Titus Andronicus, ShakesBEER, and The Sonnet Project. Other notable acting credits include Leigh Fondakowski’s SPILL at Ensemble Studio Theatre Cock and Clean Alternatives at the Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca I Am My Own Wife and Fully Committed at Barrington Stage Company I Am My Own Wife again at Coachella Valley Rep (Desert Star Award Nomination) and Two Turns Theatre Company Taylor Mac’s The Hot Month at Boomerang Theatre Company and The Temperamentals at New World Stages, standing by for Michael Urie. He received a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Actor in a Play for David Johnston’s Candy and Dorothy, which he also performed at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre in Cape Cod. WAKE, his first full-length play, was a finalist at Dayton Playhouse’s FutureFest, Boomerang Theatre Company’s First Flight Festival, and Vintage Theatre Productions’ Mystery/Thriller New Play Festival. Other short plays have appeared in mtp’s annual CHERRY PICKING at the Wild Project in NYC, at the Fine Arts Association in Willoughby, Ohio and The New American Theatre in Los Angeles IN THE WHOLE HISTORY OF HI-Q, BETTER, and HEY were finalists for the National Short Playwriting Award at City Theatre in Miami and JAM won Best Play in the 2015 LIC Short Play Festival. His short play BETTER won the 2018 Samuel French OOB Festival his full-length ALEXANDRIA was the winner of Sanguine Theatre Company’s Project Playwright 2018 and was a semifinalist for the Princess Grace Award. Vince Gatton is a New York-based actor and writer. A ghost story told by a young visitor leads Eric to suspect that Dan’s sleepwalking incidents are actually something far more sinister - but are they what he thinks they are? Or are there other forces at work? WAKE is a ghost story for the post-AIDS generation, a play about marriage, expectations, and the power of narrative to both heal and harm. As they settle into this new life, Dan is having what seem to be sleepwalking episodes. Dan and Eric have a new marriage license, a new baby, and a new house in the country.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |