Curtain Call:
Heavy-Handedness Makes for Stiff Cardboard Piano By Greggory Moore, Curtain Call Columnist
In a world full of atrocities, how do we move forward when we have destroyed that which cannot be fixed? That’s the question at the center of Hansol Jung’s Cardboard Piano, the story of what results when a child defector from Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army encounters a young lesbian couple on the eve of their flight from a war-torn township. Unfortunately, Cardboard Piano suffers from a fatal flaw common to a lot of art based in real-life tragedy: the seeming hope that the weighty subject matter
will keep us from noticing how lightweight the presentation is. But you wouldn’t know it from the opening tableau, where lighting designer Donna Ruzika gorgeously illuminates Yuri Okahana’s understated wooden set to create a haunting array of muted colors and rectilinear shadows. Director caryn desai holds on this for over two minutes, as an a capella hymn wends its way to [See Cardboard Piano, p. 13]
Real News, Real People, Really Effective
Jojo Nwoko, Dashawn “Dash” Barnes, Allison Blaize and Demetrius Hodges. Photo by Tracey Roman
May 17 - 30, 2018
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