23rd Play - Somewhere: A Primer for the End of Days by Marisela Treviño Orta

I have read a couple other works by this playwright, and she has the skills of being both cuttingly realistic and heart-renderingly poetic in different turns. You really never know what you’ll get from one of her plays (except good writing), and I decided to see what this one had in store.

Summary: "With almost all the insects gone, the world is beginning to fall apart as crops fail and people struggle to hold on to their ways of life. Cassandra and her brother Alexander are tracking the last monarch butterflies in the world as they head to the west coast. Their path intersects with a truffle farm where a small group of people are hunkering down for the on-coming collapse of society." (New Play Exchange)

Loved: There is so much fascinating about this play. Names have meaning, for one thing. Cassandra, like her namesake, has prophetic visions. The rest of the names of the characters are all out of mythology, including biblical: Alexander (fka Paris, hmmm), Sybil, Diana, Corin and Eph (short for Ephraim, I assume?). Other than Cassandra, it isn't immediately obvious why the names are given to each character, but I believe they are all chosen very specifically and it would be a fun puzzle to investigate. The summary talks about Cassandra and Alexander, but it's really an ensemble piece, which I love. The other four are living on a truffle farm together, and eventually Cassandra and Alexander arrive there. For the first act, the two groups are separate, and it's fascinating to learn how each have coped with the terrible world changes in this dying world. Orta is a very smart playwright, and it's a pleasure to read through her script. Despite the post-apocalyptic setting, everything is believable the way she writes it. She also does a great job of giving us information about the world through the conversations the characters have - a much less obvious way of getting out exposition than some of the plays I have read. As we go further into the play, we learn more and more about the situation in this world currently, but not really why. Which leaves us curious, but the why is less important in this play than how people cope. And each character copes in different ways - it's quite fascinating. I really loved that Cassandra is not scared by the changes in the world, she's such a scientist that all she can do is focus on the little bit of her science that is left, the butterflies. That gives her a focus and a reason not to get lost in an existential crisis, which would be frankly understandable under the circumstances. The relationship between Cassandra and her brother Alexander is fun; it's very real - a combination of love, teasing, and occasionally irritation. But you know they've got each others' back. The relationships of the folks on the truffle farm are also interesting - Sybil and Eph are married, and Diana is Sybil's sister. They all live on Corin's farm. The four of them have a pretty solid way to work for survival in this time, which they keep adapting as things disappear (animals, vegetables). You feel like they might actually figure it out and be able to survive. That being said, each of them has different ways of solving their own exisistential crisis of how to live in life as they now know it. Orta paints a really beautiful, if sad, vision of living in, not just a post-apocalyptic world, but a world in which you watch the things you know slowly disappear forever. This play is not didactic at all, but it clearly does have some lessons about climate change. Alexander has a monologue where he says, "I regret everything. I never recycled. I let the water run when I brushed my teeth. I never remembered to bring my own bag to the grocery store. I loved the wrong people. Drove in the HOV lane when I was alone." The lesson is there, but the way it's placed and delivered, it makes you feel like you should do better, but the playwright understands why you don't always. Overall, the play is wonderfully realistic, until it isn't. ** SPOILER(ish) ** And the ending is poignant, but hopeful, which is a wonderful way for a play about dealing with the end of the world as we know it to be.

What I didn’t Love: Well, frankly, I did NOT enjoy seeing all the things that were lost in this world. It's too easy to imagine, and was a devastatingly sad experience for me. Every thing they talk about losing (and the playwright is super specific about it in a way that I'm not going to be here) really was painful to imagine living without. That being said, that's my response, not criticism. The way the playwright has set it up works very well; I just didn't always enjoy that world, which doesn't mean it's not worth exploring. Honestly, I felt like I got to know the women a lot better than the men - the playwright spends more time introducing us to them. I didn't really love the playwright's treatment of the character of Corin. He's the only one whose name is old-fashioned but not as specific as the others. He's also the last character that the playwright says should be cast as a POC, which is interesting - it feels like she is pointing to him as the antagonist. Corin is a bit of an outsider, even though Diana, Sybil and Eph are living on his farm. He's got a close relationship with Eph, and he's in love with Diana, but he just feels sort of "other." Orta's a smart writer, so he's not two dimensional, but I just didn't love the way she's done that to him. I believe it is intentional, however - I just didn't like it. There are a lot of tricky (not impossible) things in this play - two people biking, people digging and finding things in the earth, the butterflies (which ARE a character, and the playwright suggests a puppeteer for them), and more. I think it would be complicated to produce.

Overall: This is a good play with some tricky production elements that left me thinking it might be a better film than a play, although I think it would be a good play to see visually if a company had the resources to do it well. The characters slowly reveal all the things that this world has lost, which is incredibly sad, if a valuable lesson about climate change. I didn't really want to imagine this world, and I didn't particularly like living in it for the duration of the play, but that doesn't mean it wasn't worthwhile. The play is very smartly written and very interesting. The characters are all dimensional, very human, and slightly mythological, including their names. The little tiny bit of magical realism that is inserted into the play is well done and quite believable. There's even a lovely sense of humor in a lot of it - these characters are the ones who are surviving. And ultimately, the playwright ends with a hopeful moment of magical realism, which is echoed in hopeful realism in the characters. Orta is a damn good playwright - I will definitely read more of her work, and hope to see or be involved in a production one of these days!

Here’s a link to Google Sheets with more info about the play: Play a Day Sheet

Want to read more about Marisela Treviño Orta? https://playwrightsfoundation.org/2008/03/28/interview-with-marisela-trevino-orta/