San Francisco theater artist Anne Galjour has been getting a lot of attention lately from local media. Her solo show, "You Can’t Get There From Here" uses theater to investigate regional issues of class – issues she explores by dipping into people’s lives and gathering documentary material during a series of "story circles" she staged in Upper Valley communities.
In her Hopkins Center show, Galjour turned in an imaginative and nicely articulated performance, playing nine women and men living in what appears to be the same neighborhood. Galjour’s Regina is in her 30’s. She cleans houses and needs just three more semesters at community college before she can start teaching and work toward her dream of owning a home. Iris is a transplant, one of the hundreds of hospital workers who have moved into the area and pushed up housing prices, making homes too expensive for many locals.
Nearby, Abigail claims that she and her husband Bert are 150 years old and finally deserve the chance to sell their place and move to Florida. That is until a hungry realtor, Stuart, discloses that Abigail and Bert’s place will be razed to make room for condos and shops. Suddenly, Abigail can’t bear to imagine this fate for the home that she and Bert created with their own hands-and lives.
"You Can’t Get Here From Here" focuses on this central indicator of class status in America-the ability to buy and keep your own home. Galjour has mined rich veins of material for her performance-and the fact that Ivy League bastion Dartmouth has led this commission with the Flynn Theater is innovative and remarkable.
Still, several audience members questioned whether the college had dug deeply enough. "When I take the pulse of local attitudes, especially about displacement and high housing costs, I see anger that’s raw," said one audience member during the Q & A. And he continued: "And I didn’t see that in this play."
I’m reminded of American playwright Naomi Wallace whose show, "One Flea Spare," shows a well-to-do man and his wife who find themselves reluctantly locked up with two working class characters after their house has been quarantined during a 17th century British plague. Playwright Wallace takes this opportunity of their forced confinement for penetrating and even uncomfortable dramatic explorations of class and gender. And she expands our vocabulary to discuss these rarely treated issues. As does Anne Galjour.
I left the performance thinking about strong working class characters in film and theater-Paul Newman in "Cool Hand Luke," Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront," and Melissa Leo in the recent North Country film, "Frozen River." I thought about British director Ken Loach’s picture "Ladybird, Ladybird" that explores the life of a woman trapped in the downward spiral of working poverty – who, like so many people in our local communities, struggle with the stifling fear that they simply "can’t get there from here."
Galjour’s performance gives voice to the disenfranchised – especially close to home. But more needs to be done.