Michelle Tatum, standing, and Nancy Berg, seated, play mother and daughter in Chattanooga Theatre Centre's production of Jar the Floor. Click to enlarge.
Cheryl West’s contemporary play Jar the Floor opened at the Chattanooga Theatre Center’s Circle Theatre on Friday night as part of the CTC’s Circle Series. This is where they present plays with asterisks, meaning “buyer beware.” It’s a sign that something in the material will probably offend you. This unfortunately gives a good deal of the potential audience the opportunity to opt out, but at the same time it gives the CTC the opportunity to appear currant and equal opportunity minded.
As a result, there were two groups noticeably absent from the opening night performance: CTC’s regular audience and Chattanooga’s Black community, for whom this play should be a form of anthem. It is the story of four generations of Black women gathered together to celebrate the birthday of MaDear, the family matriarch. If anything, the audience absences were reflected by what was also absent in the story – Black men. Call it a latter-day “Ebony Magnolias,” but it centers upon the potent combination of love, guilt, anger, and foolishness close to the surface in the lives of the “stronger sex,” who must find their own means of coping and survival – the play refers to them as “a long line of survivors” – when routinely disappointed and deserted by the other half of the general population.
You have to commend the CTC for presenting Jar the Floor and other plays like it, but it would even be a better state of affairs it they could find a way to bring the disparate absent audiences under one roof, just as it might be a better solution for the general mental health of our culture if we could find ways to keep more families together. It would also appear that while the CTC substantial audience base tolerates the company’s mission to present some controversial and/or timely material, they don’t really support it, at least not with their attendance. Why wasn’t opening night full?
My feeling is that the production scratched the surface of what is really there and what has allowed this play to win numerous national honors. If you re-mounted it across the river over on Martin Luther King Boulevard in less comfortable surroundings, what dynamite might you find? As it was, the audience had an enjoyable time, but the actresses, given material that strikes very close to home, but performing in an environment that still is uncomfortable with this kind of subject matter, were somewhat hamstrung.
This play requires gritty realism to work because that is what it is all about, yet director Kate Briere made numerous choices – non-existent mirrors, non-existent doors, non-existent garden, non-realistic sound cues, semi-realistic set, etc. – that tended to handicap rather than enhance a cast that was trying hard to give it their all. The actresses were so busy dealing with the non-reality their energy could not be summoned for the task at hand.
The upside is that even half-baked the audience thoroughly enjoyed the show. It is uncompromisingly frank and scatological, so don’t wander in naively. At the same time, one would hope that the 21st century would find room for a theatre presentation where people are allowed to speak and behave the way they really do, and not in some disingenuous attempt to hang on to a lost past. To remain in the vanguard of theatre in Chattanooga, and not become just the other museum-cum-country club by the river opposite the Hunter, the CTC needs to do these sorts of plays, but it needs to find ways to meld its potential audiences and make them feel at home together. This is also an organization that has an infrastructure, financing, a staff, a well-endowed plant, means, and an 80-year track record. What it also needs is a product. All the lip-service in the world will not make a show right.
The cast of five – Nancy L. Berg, Etienne F. Easley, Deborah Pringle, Michelle Gilbert Tatum, and Jessica Andrews – with the last two being particular standouts, occasionally let a few sparks fly, and given time may kindle a real fire. The show should roll through like an 18-wheeler heading home on pay day, but all too frequently it had stops like the cross town bus.
After seeing and performing in numerous shows at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., the country’s premier theatre-in-the-round, it is clear that the set for productions in that configuration (just like the Circle Theatre) depend on horizontal elements (the floor and ceiling), rather than vertical elements (flats and drops) that you would find in a proscenium production. Also, the selling point in this arrangement is not sightlines, it is proximity. The floor that the cast attempts to “jar” (meaning “dance on”) was nicely painted, but nothing except one small hanging light fixture was overhead, making things in general very empty. This is a play that should revel in “fullness.” A lot more imagination and care could have been employed in making the space work for the show. Right now the production simmers when it should cook. It continues through January 31, and perhaps the temperature will rise by then.