Nothing is Trash, Stories on Stage and Buntport Theatre
A review by Lisa Bornstein
Buntport Theatre actors
Buntport Theater Company has a long relationship with literature. The highly creative, highly amusing company has adapted work by Chekhov, Kafka, Thurber and Sophocles, among others. So a partnership with Stories On Stage, known for wonderful aural evenings of storytelling by superb actors, seems a natural. On this evening, though, the individual stories did not live up to the promise of the performers.
In its recent collaboration, “Nothing Is Trash,” four of Buntport’s members – Brian Colonna, Hannah Duggan, Erik Edborg and Erin Rollman, performed bits of found writing, including receipts, notes and lists, interspersed with writing about found objects. The Stories On Stage stage, usually tastefully outfitted with Persian rugs and a podium, reflected both the guest artists and the theme. It looked like a college apartment on Sunday morning, littered with wrappers, trash bags and a busted sofa. Rather than coming on one at a time, the full company spent the entire evening on set.
The smaller pieces were frequently projected onscreen, which added a touch of verisimilitude. The evening’s best moments came in these brief bits of accidental literature, as in the list of a girl’s goals, read by Edborg, or the breakup letter read by Duggan that ends with, “I will still come to visit you on Sundays.” A venomous course evaluation includes, “If I could write this in blood and tears, I would.” Confessions from the website Post Secret are searingly poignant, while a rent ad, looking for a “mother-type person,” is painfully funny. Erin Rollman delivers a raucously engaging interior monologue by a woman at a concert with her boyfriend.
Erik Edborg
Several longer pieces, however, surprisingly lack power. One by Susan Orleans describes the found paper that led to the writing of her book, “The Orchid Thief,” and another by Tad Friend, suffer from being meditations on writing. The additional layer of remove harms the immediacy of the medium. In the end, those pieces of paper found in the grocery cart, or stuck to a shoe, provide the evening’s most hilarious and most touching moments.
“Nothing is Trash” was presented by Stories on Stage in collaboration with Buntport Theatre, at Su Teatro Cultural and Performing Arts Center, 721 Santa Fe Drive, Denver, on March 8th, 2014.
Stories on Stage presents Nothing is Trash
