SCR/Party Play with Ann Conway

Deutsche Bank's Doug McCrea (left) and Michael Davis with playwright Tanya Barfield

Left to right, Bette and Wiley Aitken with director Leah C. Gardiner

Left to right, Mary Roosevelt, Marian Bergeson and Marian La Follette

"BLUE DOOR " PREMIERE WOWS THEATRE-GOERS
By Ann Conway

Ecstatic over the standing ovation given South Coast Repertory's world premiere of her play, Blue Door, Tanya Barfield just kept smiling as she watched First Nighters toss back libations and feast on fare from Mark's Catering as they mingled on Ela's Terrace at the April 28 post-performance bash.

She'd conceived the idea for the play about a mathematics professor in the throes of a professional and personal crisis—who, during a sleepless night, is visited by several generations of ancestry—after looking at some photographs from slavery times and wondering: ‘What would these people say?’

What 'they said' was so powerful and disturbing that it tweaked people's perceptions of the black experience. "The play tells the story that we all vaguely know in the back of our minds but makes us come to grips with it," observed London-born playgoer, Mary Roosevelt. "Particularly for me, because I wasn't born here. It's not part of my history."

Directed by Leah C. Gardiner and underwritten in part by Deutsch Bank Private Wealth Management, the fictional work—set between 1851 and 1995—is written with such authenticity that one leaves the theatre feeling it must have been culled from the playwright's own familial experience. But no, it was all conceived from her "imagination" Barfield said, as, one by one, well-wishers strode up to offer her congratulations. "I feel great," she said, taking a breather. "And I love this theatre and the people who work here—love it, love it!"

Playing Lewis, the anguished professor whose personal world seems to deny his own history, "pulls a lot of emotional strings," said actor Joseph C. Phillips, as he swept quietly into the party. "It takes a bit to come down afterward."

SCR Artistic Directors David Emmes and Martin Benson shared the crowd's enthusiasm for the launch of a play that already has a New York production planned. "We are really so pleased to be able to present the world premiere," said Benson during his onstage remarks.

Observed Emmes, as he rubbed elbows with the party-goers: "This is a play that makes us examine information that is not unfamiliar to us in a totally new way. And it is done so artfully and uniquely that we pay very close attention. Barfield is a masterful story-teller."

Also among guests: Gail Does, Terry Dwyer and Victoria Stewart.

S.L. and Betty Huang with actor Larry Gilliard, Jr. (right)	Left to right, Deutsche Bank Honorary Producers Michael and Lindsey Davis and Doug and McCrea
Tom and Marilyn Sutton with Tom Britton, center	Left to right, Anna Lake, Paul Makarechian with Paula Tomei