Performance Coverage: Laura Shamas's CHASING HONEY

Colony Collapse and a Defense of the Maternal

Laura Shamas’s Chasing Honey, November 14, 8pm
Cast: Cara Gee, Sheila Tousey, James Fall, Chaske Spencer, Tamara Podemski, Cody Lightning, Gary Farmer, Ryan Victor Pierce

By Tom Pearson

The layers upon layers of analogy and metaphor in Laura Shamas’s play Chasing Honey, read at The Public Theater on November 14, 2008, could, in the hands of a less adept writer, become an overwhelmingly muddy mess. But Shamas is, thankfully, a writer of great delicacy and depth. Her characters speak with youthful slang and colloquial carelessness to the point that we are often surprised when the full, weighty impact of a scene falls upon our heads.

The play commenced with a dreamy sequence as the character of Kai, played by Sheila Tousey, appeared to her daughter, Sandy (actress Cara Gee), and we were immediately confronted with the complex breakdown of the mother/child relationship that becomes an overarching metaphor for the work. Tousey’s reading of Kai was a fluid dance between the wise spirit mother and the unraveling junkie determined to self-destruct. Gee, likewise, treated her reading of Sandy with equal parts youthful naiveté and the resulting wisdom of someone who is forced into responsibility too soon. Sandy’s father Andrew, actor James Fall, is a stabilizing force in her life, but only momentarily, before he is lost to a tour of duty with the Shadow Wolves in Afghanistan.

Another familial relationship in the play reunites actors Gary Farmer and Cody Lighting as Jimmy and his son Len, two migrant beekeepers who set out to solve the problem of Colony Collapse Disorder within their hives. Farmer and Lightning’s relationship as father and son was so warm and complex and immediately believable that it was evident that they share a great rapport with one another that is both fluid and readily available. In fact, the entire cast felt like a who’s who among Native performers, and the incredible synergy between them was palpable, lending the reading a great deal of energy and clarity.

The two main characters of the play, Sandy and Len, meet through a university Native American Studies club, which represents an alternate community for them and the other youth in the play which includes Mack, played by Chaske Spencer and Heather, played by Tamara Podemski. Within this group, Shamas gives us all the politics of identity and reclamation that face the individual characters, but also Indian youth at large. Within the group and in their efforts to save the bees, Sandy and Len try to tease out meaning from their family units-in-crisis, the complicated relationships and imminent loss of their fathers, and the absence of their mothers. At the same time, they find themselves being drawn together by their shared experiences of loss, which eventually allows them to find solace in each other.

The concept of Colony Collapse Disorder for the bees becomes synonymous with the disintegrating mental and physical stability of Sandy’s mother and the breakdown of her family unit. And while Len’s family unit parallels this, it also turns the metaphor back onto Mother Earth, illustrating the circular and interconnected relationship of the two and what this crisis reflects of larger environmental issues. Shamas shows us that when the pressure is on the maternal, the circle cannot hold: our mothers lose control and vanish; the queens abandon their hive and the bees die; Mother Earth revolts. And somehow the play, under the direction of Alanis King, never feels too heavy. It remains haunting and sad, especially because the issues of family and community are not repaired. Worse, Colony Collapse Disorder is still an issue in our own world when we leave the theater. Yet, we are left with a kernel of hope that with love and some attentive care we can relieve the pressure on the maternal and perhaps find some answers to help us repair the circle.

Chasing Honey also featured the talents of Ryan Victor Pierce on stage directions.

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Chasing Honey was followed by a post-performance discussion featuring Native playwrights Eric Gansworth, Diane Glancy, Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, Laura Shamas, and William S. Yellow Robe, Jr.

In the discussion following the reading, each of the playwrights discussed their different approaches to playwriting. First, Laura Shamas discussed her mandate to write plays that provide opportunities for the greatest number of Native actors. Later she explicated her use of metaphor and defense of the maternal. Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl answered questions with regard to contemporary work. Diane Glancy spoke about her role as a playwright and educator and to the issue of student expectations from Native work. She discussed the disappointment students feel when they read Silko, Momaday, Welch, and Erdrich and find not a spiritual enlightenment that they seek, but the harsh realities of contemporary American Indian life in all its disappointment and effort to recreate meaning from nothing.

William S. Yellow Robe, Jr. furthered this line of thought by raising questions about audience and privilege. In an eloquent moment, he proclaimed: “We want men of peace, but every man of peace, we’ve assassinated,” and then he goes on to speak about how the days of sending a message to the “Great White Father in the East” are over. Still giddy from the presidential election results of a few weeks earlier, you could feel the electricity in the audience at this proclamation. Like my assessment of the play above, it seemed true here as well, that whatever rigorous debate and critical discourse occurred throughout the festival, an undercurrent of unified hope frequently bubbled to the surface.

Read the entire transcript from the post-show discussion.