By the time this installment of Live Active Cultures comes out, the chaotic presidential campaign season will have finally come to a conclusion, and regardless of the eventual outcome it’s likely that nearly half the electorate will consider the winning candidate and their supporters to be intellectually inferior and/or developmentally defective. Since politicians and pundits of both parties have proven pathetically inept at prompting us to reach beyond our self-selected silos, perhaps the arts can illuminate a path toward communication between people standing on opposite ends of a spectrum.
At least, that was the dim spark of hope I walked away with from the Winter Park Library last week, after I followed up my early voting visit with a presentation downstairs in the Edyth Bush Theater from Central Florida Vocal Arts (centralfloridavocalarts.org) previewing their production of The Light in the Piazza at the Plaza Live Nov. 15-16.
Adapted by Craig Lucas from Elizabeth Spencer’s 1960 novella (which also inspired the 1962 movie), Piazza stars Elina Moon as Clara Johnson, an American tourist in Italy whose traumatic brain injury has forever frozen her at age 12. Composer Adam Guettel won a 2005 Tony award for its operatic score, which makes it an obvious addition to CFVA’s repertoire.
Moon, whose siblings Anneliese and Clarissa are also performers, was working on a cruise ship when she was cast in the role.
Moon said during the event, “I do have a background in opera and musical theater, which is part of what drew me to this piece, because no other musical I think has so much Italian in it. It’s so unique, and the story is just so lovely; it’s a piece I’ve been wanting to do for about 10 years.”
But Clara’s conflict with her too-protective mother (Amy Sue Hardy) over her romance with Italian paramour Fabrizio (Edwin Perez) also raises important issues involving neurodiversity, which were addressed in the fascinating talk called “Illuminating the Mind: Exploring Brain Injury through The Light in the Piazza.” CFVA executive director Theresa Smith-Levin moderated the discussion with AdventHealth experts Rich Abante Moats, an art and music therapist, and Jennifer Campbell, a speech pathologist, accompanied by excerpts from the show performed by members of the cast. Songs such as “Statues and Stories,” “Hysteria” and “Say It Somehow” were used to illustrate communication differences like echolalia (repetition of words and phrases) and impulsivity through their dissonant, “jumpy” musical construction, while their lyrical themes invited questions about agency and autonomy. All were addressed during the informative talk and concluding Q&A.
“First and foremost, there’s beauty in what we might think might be chaotic or erratic,” said Moats in response to a recital of “The Beauty Is” by Moon. “Who has looked at a parent and a child with a disability and pitied them, instead of celebrating the beauty that is in each individual? … When you’ve interacted with an autistic person or a person with a neurological disorder, and it’s hard to communicate with them, maybe you don’t understand them. But from their perspective, they’re expressing all of their thoughts and feelings.”
“That’s a very important lesson for all of us, because when there’s verbal communication breakdown, what do we utilize? Body language, facial expression, people’s energy. So the energy and the expression and the faces — the looks that we give people — sometimes that’s all they can sense from us,” added Campbell. “Communicating is so much more than our words, you know. We can show kindness and understanding and empathy through so many other ways than our words: our eye contact with somebody, our smile … a tap on the arm, just saying, ‘I hear you. I understand you.'”
In a statement, director Ayòfémi Demps (who helmed Theater West End’s recent Rocky Horror Show and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill) said, “I’m most excited to delve into the fascinating levels of Clara’s mind. She makes audiences question their assumptions where neurodivergence is concerned, and sometimes her ability to challenge makes others uncomfortable. There is a tendency to infantilize women, women with negatively perceived exceptionalities, and neurodivergent women. So Clara’s arc, and her mother’s arc as caretaker, are so important.”
I’ll leave the last word to Smith-Levin, whose emotional advice about celebrating differences could apply equally to interacting with an autistic toddler or your politically radicalized uncle: “The more we honor communication, whatever its form is, the more we entice more engagement,” said Smith-Levin. “Instead of trying to make people fit into a narrow path that feels comfortable for us, meet people exactly where they are, and honor the fact that they are engaging and communicating and expressing. And then we have a responsibility to try and make meaning out of that.”
The Plaza Live
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This article appears in Nov 6-12, 2024.