You assume you bought issues? Issues — by the a whole bunch — flood Philadelphia recommendation columnist and playwright R. Eric Thomas’ inbox:
- ·What in regards to the niece who scheduled her wedding ceremony for a similar day as her grandmother’s 100th birthday?
- Would procuring at a distinct grocery retailer assist the married particular person crushing on a grocery store clerk?
- ·How can a 60-year-old man with FOMD (Worry of Lacking Daddyhood) appeal to a youthful lady to marry him so he generally is a father?
Resolving life’s difficult questions on the price of three a day, seven days per week, requires a frightening measure of chutzpah, humility and vitality, together with numerous quick keyboard work. Actually, it’s a surprise that Thomas had any capability in any way for workshopping “Glitter within the Glass,” his play operating Could 29 by means of June 15 at Theatre Exile.
Final yr, the Tribune Content material Company tapped Thomas to interchange retiring syndicated recommendation columnist Amy Dickinson (“Ask Amy”). In “Asking Eric,” Thomas now dispenses his knowledge answering questions in additional than 100 publications, together with the Washington Put up.
However with lower than a yr on the job and a play on the best way, Thomas is already grappling with simply how troublesome some questions are to reply.
His resolution?
Perhaps solutions aren’t at all times required. Or a minimum of that’s the place he’s taking with “Glitter within the Glass.”
“I began this play in 2017,” Thomas stated. Premiered as “Nightbird,” the play targeted on Chelle, a Black artist answering a fee to create a brand new monument to interchange a Accomplice statue. Officers eliminated the monument from a park close to her childhood house in Baltimore.
“It felt like I needed to give you an answer to the energetic query: What will we do with this painful shared historical past?” Thomas stated. “How will we repair the scar of those Accomplice monuments and every little thing they signify?”
In “Nightbird,” Chelle struggled endlessly with the query, most likely as a result of Thomas, as her playwright creator, was struggling as nicely. Chelle did attain a conclusion by the ultimate act, however Thomas wasn’t utterly glad with how his personal play ended.
So, when Deborah Block, producing inventive director at Theatre Exile, provided him an opportunity for a do-over, Thomas did simply that, refashioning his three-character “Nightbird” into “Glitter within the Glass.”
In his revised model, Thomas determined that the thorny query of how a single monument ought to specific all the historical past and legacy of the Confederacy didn’t should be answered by himself, or his characters.
“It was too massive a activity for her — and for me,” he stated. “As an alternative, the play strikes towards a launch, a sense of group, versus a sense of battle.”
Simply as Thomas, the recommendation columnist, appears to be like in any respect the elements when answering questions from readers, Thomas, the playwright, additionally weighed his personal emotional state of affairs in opposition to the prevailing tensions of our time.
“For me as an artist, I used to be hungering for one thing completely different proper now. I used to be hungering for an expertise within the theater that I used to be being taken care of, as an artist, as an individual, as an viewers,” he stated. “So many performs will ring the alarm bell and shake the shoulders of the viewers [as if to say], `Do you see what’s occurring?’
“I say, we all know what’s occurring,” Thomas stated. “Right here’s a spot for us to really feel secure and renewed. That renewal is admittedly vital to me.”
Non-people characters
Three individuals act within the play, however they’re joined by two extra characters — the eliminated monument and its substitute.
In crafting “Glitter,” Thomas consulted with Jane Golden from Mural Arts Philadelphia and Paul Farber, director of the Monument Lab, a Philadelphia nonprofit, two teams that domesticate and facilitate conversations about previous, current and future public artwork and monuments.
“Some of the fascinating issues that got here up is this concept of monuments as a website of public reminiscence and likewise a website of group dialog,” Thomas stated. “Typically monuments can really feel like issues which might be set in historical past and set in house by any individual else — by a authorities or a corporation.
“However true monuments come from the group they signify,” he stated, describing them as a dialog within the current that’s each telling a narrative in regards to the previous and utilizing it to form the long run.
In that manner, monuments are time vacationers, which brings us to the title of Thomas’ work, “Glitter within the Glass.”
It’s a Star Trek reference!
To realize the moments when Star Trek’s characters are transported by means of time and house — as are the concepts conveyed by monuments — Star Trek’s manufacturing crew filmed aluminum mud falling by means of a beam of high-intensity gentle – glittering within the glass.
For Block, Exile’s producing inventive director, the brand new title Thomas gave to his work is emblematic of his items as a playwright.
“He has a manner of mentioning actually vital social points,” she stated. “He’s attracted to actually nuanced concepts, however he has a satirical sensibility, a sit-com rhythm to his writing that permits audiences to enter into severe subjects light-heartedly.”
Thomas set “Glitter” in Baltimore, the place he grew up. He moved to Philadelphia, then again to Baltimore, and now lives in South Philadelphia, across the nook from Theatre Exile. His husband, Rev. David Norse Thomas, is a pastor on the Swarthmore Presbyterian Church.
For years, Thomas has been sharing internet hosting duties at The Moth StorySlam, held month-to-month at World Café Dwell. StorySlam is an open-mic storytelling competitors primarily based on a theme and a part of a nationwide array of storytelling occasions sponsored by The Moth. A New York nonprofit, The Moth is devoted to the craft of storytelling.
Thomas will subsequent co-host on June 3, when the subject is Hospitality. Doorways open at 6:15 p.m., tales start at 7:30 p.m.
FYI
“Glitter within the Glass,” directed by Ontaria Kim Wilson, Could 29-June 15, Theatre Exile, 1340-48 S. 13th St., Phila. 215-218-4022.