By Lizzy Nofziger (IP)
Hopping off the metro at McPherson Square, the WLP ladies made their way through the chilly streets of DC to enjoy Chimerica, by Lucy Kirkwood. The theatre world does not see many plays written by women, so WLP took advantage of the opportunity to experience Kirkwood’s play that is highly acclaimed in London and now premiering in the States.
Chimerica centers on a fictional American photojournalist, Joe Schofield, who captured the infamous “Tank Man” in Tiananmen Square, and on a Beijing native, Yang Zhang Lin, whom he befriends while working there. The play flashes between the lives of Schofield, Zhang Lin and all those connected to them in both 1989 and 2012. The audience sees how one man’s desire to fulfill a fantasy of solving the mystery of the ‘Tank Man” affects more than he could ever imagine.
This play serendipitously alludes multiple times to propaganda, a subject two of the four cohorts – International Arts and Culture (IAC) and International Politics (IP) – are studying with Professor Salchak. This resulted in a few giggles slipping out from the group. The same week of the Chimerica symposium, the IP cohort discussed the idea of revolutions and tipping-points, and the plot of the play revolves around the lone protestor of Tiananmen Square. Also leading up the play, the IP cohort had researched the aspects of democratic and totalitarian regimes, the two types of government highlighted and contrasted in the play.
While there were mixed reviews of Chimerica throughout the Women’s Leadership Program, a majority believed the play to be adequate enough in the acting department, but as for the educational aspect, it is found wanting. The three-hour-plus play unfolded in a clumsy manner, shifting from plot line to plot line, throughout different millenniums. The show included cliché characters and played-out stereotypes in an effort to narrate a photojournalist’s quest to tell the big story, where no one and no thing could get in the way of his need to unearth the truth. The script is splattered with superfluous romance and over-exaggerated characters that draw away from what I believe is Kirkwood’s intent of expressing the differences, and similarities, between the two nations’ discrepancies in governance.
If you went into the play expecting to see a nuanced commentary on totalitarian China, censorship, and those themes in relation to America, you would be sorely disappointed. However, if you simply wanted a night on the town, Chimerica is as good a show as any.
Chimerica was performed at Studio Theatre from September 9 to October 18.