“Dead Man’s Cell Phone” deals with the most important question regarding the afterlife: What happens to our cell phone after we pass on?
The play is the theatre department’s first production this semester and promises a healthy dose of realists, surrealists and dark comedy, said director Kristen Loree.
“I found this play a couple of years ago when I was at a conference in Denver and bored,” Loree said. “So I went to a bookstore, pulled it off the shelf, stood there and read the entire thing. I was like, ‘Hmm, I think I like this play.’ I was just enthralled with the way this play takes us from the real into the surreal and back down again into the real.”
“Dead Man’s Cell Phone,” written by Sarah Ruhl, focuses on Jean and how she acquired a cell phone from a dead man. It chronicles what happens as Jean discovers that the man whose cell phone she stole was an organ trafficker. Loree said the play focuses on cell phones and their impacts on communication and the human psyche.
“There’s a lot of interest in cell phones and the quality of relationships that comes from cell phone conversations, or the lack thereof, which maybe is a more important theme,” she said. “There’s a lot of lying that happens in this play. Lying into a cell phone because they can’t see you, they don’t know who you are, you can tell them whatever you want.”
The play, originally produced in 2007, features an ensemble cast not present in most renditions of the play. She said adding more bodies on stage gives the play psychological depth.
“The play is about how people solve their loneness issues,” she said. “Jean is a very lonely and not a terribly exciting human being at the beginning of the play. There was this sense in all of the scenes that was like we couldn’t just have two people on stage because we won’t notice they are lonely because there’s nothing to compare it to. I have these eight bodies that I can utilize to fulfill the rest of the story and so we have been having a really good time filling out the story and seeing how that plays itself out just by having other bodies on the set.”
Lead actress Rachel Corona said because Jean’s character is so introverted she had to focus more on the physicality of her performance.
“She’s very interior,” Corona said. “So for me, it’s very important physically to be still. So I focus a lot on her body and where she holds her power and where she holds her weakness. She begins very uncertain, very unsure of herself and as the play progresses … she becomes more confident in herself, and so you see a physical transformation as well as a mental transformation. So she goes from very timid and very nervous to more solid and more powerful. Watch her hands. All of Jean’s nerves come out in her hands.”
Corona added that the uncertainty of Jean’s character proved difficult to capture.
“She’s very indecisive, and it’s hard to play an indecisive character without seeming like you’re not making choices,” she said. “Sometimes, I worry that the choices that I am making for the character are going to look like I, as the actor, don’t know what I am doing.”
In addition to the ensemble and specialized lead performance, Loree said the play also features live music.
“I am a pretty strong believer in live music,” Loree said. “What I love about that is then the music is seamless. There’s just absolutely no question that this is the music for the play.”
Composer Tom Monahan said the music helps the words say what the actors cannot.
“Basically what I do is go to all the rehearsals,” he said. “When you look at it on paper it’s very flat. There are no dynamics behind the words. When they get to the scene in rehearsal, I get the sense of where I need to go from an emotional perspective and then translate that into the music.”
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Monahan also said the play’s direction for film noir music left something to be desired.
“Basically I interpreted that and went with my own version of what I think film noir is,” Monahan said. “What we are trying to do is combine film noir with comedy because it’s a dark comedy. It’s basically film noir as a background and a little sprinkling of old-fashioned jazz.”
