Theatre South Carolina will present Polaroid Stories, a play inspired by the stories of street kids crossed with the myths of ancient Greece, Nov. 14–23 at Longstreet Theater. The play brought its creator, Naomi Iizuka, the 1998 PEN Center USA West Award for Drama, an honor given for outstanding work by living American playwrights.
“Polaroid Stories is about a true and pressing issue: teenagers and young people who are living in the streets,” said Jim O’Connor, artistic director of Theatre South Carolina. “The play is based on interviews the playwright conducted with young prostitutes and street kids. The script reads like a book of street poetry; it’s almost a rock opera. It takes place on an abandoned pier on the outermost edge of a city, a stopover for dreamers, dealers, and desperadoes. The kids use language that mixes poetry and profanity, imbuing the play with lyricism and great theatrical force.”
Clearly, Polaroid Stories is not a conventional drama with the requisite hero.
“It is the story of a group, and it reflects the way they speak and the things they do: there is very strong language, and there is talk of prostitution and drug use,” said Tim Donahue, director of marketing. “Yet the characters are identified by names out of myth. Nobody goes by their real names; they go by street names that are loaded with meaning. They tell stories about how they got to where they are today that are implausible and mythological in many ways. One of the characters is a male prostitute named Narcissus, and he’s very concerned with his hair and makeup. So, these characters share certain characteristics or patterns of behavior with their mythological counterparts. Myth-making has the power, they hope, to transform their lives.”
The actors in Polaroid Stories are all USC undergraduate and graduate students.
Third-year directing MFA student Craig Miller will direct the production. Miller has had two directing successes this year: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Kudzu at Trustus Theater. Polaroid Stories is Miller’s last assignment as an MFA candidate before he leaves for his internship.
The student set designers, overseen by Nic Ularu, theatre, are turning Longstreet Theater into an urban jungle.
“The set is a great environment that includes graffiti, metal, rubber, even running water to depict a city sewer,” Donahue said. “It’s a demolished lot with broken pavement, and characters will enter from below and above stage level. Even a garbage dumpster will be a stage entrance.”
10/03
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Above, clockwise from lower left: Marcus Thomas, Sarah Thomas, Fábio Pires, and Matt Purdy are in Theatre South Carolina's production of Polaroid Stories Nov. 14–23. Language and situations in the play are not suitable for children.
