What if the town you grew up in were the home of NASA’s Space Shuttle? What if you grew up deeply affected by the dedication and the prosperity that brought? What if you knew the sights of launches and the sounds of sonic booms as intimately as most Americans know the sights and sounds of home runs? What if your family didn’t work for NASA, but the idea of service that informed your childhood became your milk and cookies, so that after completing an education to become a kindergarten teacher, you joined the army? And what if, after you had served two tours, your mother needed care in a nursing home, so you left your family and friends, once again, to earn the bonus offered for a third tour of duty to help pay for it? And what if, on that final tour you lost your health and your place in the world?
Playwright Lindsey Ferrentino grew up on Florida’s Space Coast, influenced by a ubiquitous, local poster: “Welcome to Merritt Island — where dreams are launched.” But while she studied Theatre Arts at NYU, got a Masters in Playwriting under Tina Howe and Mark Bly at Hunter College, and traveled to London to learn at the Writer’s Guild of Great Britain, there were layoffs at NASA and the shuttle program was shut down. When she returned, her hometown was utterly changed — physically, economically and psychologically. Many young people without hope of other employment and needing to search farther afield for their own American dreams entered military service. Her best friend as a child became a psychologist at a Veterans Affairs Center in her town, and she herself began reading about and interviewing veterans — especially those with PTSD.
Then Ferrentino entered Yale’s MFA playwriting program and started crafting “Ugly Lies the Bone,” a play that explores those “what ifs” and much more. In it, she brings to life the Space Coast, an abandoned American Dream community with compassion and occasional humor. Her protagonist is Jess, a soldier returning from Afghanistan so disfigured and pain-assaulted that recognition by family and friends is nearly impossible. Jess wants to understand what’s inside her and what’s around her. She wants cessation of pain and a job, “a real job” as she calls it. She rages to live, and is being aided, haltingly but determinedly, by a disembodied voice directing her with Virtual Reality.
There are other fascinating characters: a loving, compassionate sister (Rory Hammond), an old boyfriend (Hamish Allan-Headley), the sister’s new boyfriend (Dylan Chalfy), Jess’s mother (Ariel Bock), and that voice (Bock again), who struggle (not always successfully) to come to grips with their own needs, problems, and weaknesses, and who try to help Jess. And there is music, always music! Patriotic songs, Paul Simon songs. Songs by turn clarifying, soothing, and ironic.
But it is not an ironic play. During a long, generous interview the director, Daniela Veron and members of the cast consistently describe this courageous, complex work as “life affirming” and “non-judgmental.” Christianna Nelson who plays Jess and Rory Hammond who plays her sister, Kacie express delight that on stage they explore a beautiful “sister bond,” not the usual, competitive, undercutting one we see too often in TV, movies, and theatre. Veron emphasizes that in this play, “hope intertwines with illusion.” And in another place, explaining Virtual Reality she says, “science tells us that our bodies are made to heal eventually. Under the right circumstances, our brains will allow us to deny pain in order to move and grow stronger.”
I read the script and attended an early preview, and was moved by the love Ferrentino’s people — even in the most fraught relationships — develop for each other. For example, it was sobering and exhilarating to hear Jess tell Stevie she had left him because she wanted to help “those people” in Afghanistan, had wanted “to finish it” for them because she knew she was “good at her job.” And what was her job? She tells another character she was “a gunner.” This is a new, exciting work by a young woman who sweeps away easy answers, rejects clichés, and challenges the audience to see and to feel the world (as art always does) with greater understanding. Like the best of tragi-comedies, “Ugly Lies the Bone” is entertaining and cathartic.
_______
“Ugly Lies the Bone” is in previews this week at The Bernstein Theatre at Shakespeare & Company. It opens on Friday, June 24th at 7:30 and runs through August 28th. Tickets are available through the Berkshire Edge calendar, at the Shakespeare & Company Box Office at 70 Kemble Street, Lenox, Mass., and by phone at 413-637-3353. There are a few $20 seats available to all for all performances at the Bermustnstein Theatre.
