By Randi Bjornstad
It almost seems too good to be true after all these months of cocooning and sequestering, but Oregon Contemporary Theatre will be onstage June 4-12 with its first in-person performances since the pandemic began more than a year ago.
The play is an award-winning comedy called ART, written by Yasmina Reza. The director is Michael Malek Najjar, on the faculty of the Department of Theatre Arts at the University of Oregon and himself a prolific writer of plays and theater-related topics as well as a director and performer.
The premise of ART is intriguing. A guy named Serge buys an all-white painting and pays 200,000 euros for it ($243,850.80 on the current exchange) and then has to face the reactions of his longtime friends Marc and Yvan, who don’t necessarily share his enthusiasm for either the artwork or the expense.
The play brings up several issues. Would a completely white (or any other color) painting be considered art? If so, how much would it really be worth? And why? And what conclusions could people reasonably draw — even people who have been friends for a long time — about someone who would make such an expenditure?
The actors who bring these questions to the OCT stage are Brian Haimbach as Serge, Kelly Oristano as Yvan, and as Marc, a newcomer to the OCT stage, Rich Brown.
Craig Willis, OCT’s producing artistic director, is excited and relieved to be welcoming live audiences back to the downtown Eugene stage, especially with this particular production.
“Yasmina Reza’s biting Tony and Olivier Award winning comedy is a great vehicle for live theater performed with social distancing,” Willis said in a news release introducing the play. “ART has only three actors on stage, no intermission, and our seating will put groups of four or two seats together, with no more than one group in each aisle so patrons can enter and leave safely.”
That means the show is likely to be all but sold out before it begins, but OCT also will offer a streaming-on-demand option from June 7-12.
In addition to the actors and director Najjar, the crew for ART includes scenic design by Amy Dunn, costumes by Erin Wills, lighting by Janet Rose, sound by Madison Fung assisted by Bradley Branam, and video streaming by Eric Hadley. Colleen Rooney is the production stage manager.
The award-winning playwright, Yasmina Reza, also is a novelist and memoirist with many accolades for her work, which has been translated into 30 languages (in the case of ART into English by Christopher Hampton). Her previous plays include Conversations After a Burial; Winter Crossing; The Unexpected Man; Life x3; A Spanish Play; and God of Carnage. Her novels are titled Desolation; Adam Haberberg; and On Arthur Schopenhauer’s Sledge. She also wrote a nonfiction book, Dawn, Dusk or Night, about spending a year following former French president Nicolas Sarkozy on the campaign trail before his election, as well as two memoirs, Hammerklavier and Nulle part.
Oregon Contemporary Theatre presents ART
Live in-person performances: 7:30 p.m. on June 4-5 and 10-12; 2 p.m. matinee on June 6
Where: 194 W. Broadway, Eugene; streaming online at octheatre.org
Tickets: $20-32 in person; $15 for streaming online, available at octheatre.org or through the box office at 541-465-1506
