BERNARDSTON — “Black-out,” instructs Carl Erikson, stage manager for the upcoming Silverthorne Theater Company production “Two Rooms,” from his seat behind a plastic folding table alongside the director, Rebecca Daniels.
The play will be performed today at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. It will also run July 21 to 23 with evening performances at 7:30 and another Saturday matinee at 2 p.m. in the Sloan Theater at Greenfield Community College.
After pausing to look at his notes, Erikson gives the command for the next scene to begin.
“You can come in Michael,” he says. “Lights up!”
In steps blindfolded and handcuffed Charles Holt of Northampton, portraying fictional American professor Michael Wells, who has been taken hostage by a militant group in Beirut during the mid-1980s.
“Some days I go around a room at home. Any room. Doesn’t matter, they’re all wonderlands compared to where I’m kept,” he begins, standing in front of a small middle eastern rug.
“Today it’s my office,” Holt continues, “I try to remember everything about every piece of furniture.”
There’s a certain degree of exclusivity and a sense of secrecy that comes with watching a play before opening day, especially with a compelling drama like “Two Rooms,” which uses only a few props and a handful of actors to relate an emotionally gripping narrative that seems larger than life.
The fictional play, written by Lee Blessing in 1990, is set in Beirut, 1986, during the Lebanon Hostage Crisis, a time when more than 100 foreign nationals were taken hostage by the Shi’a Islamist militant group Hezbollah.
During the chaotic period, the president of the American University of Beirut was assassinated, a U.S. Marine base was attacked and a U.S. embassy was bombed.
The character Michael Wells is kidnapped when leaving his job as a professor at the university. The play dramatizes the experiences and hardships his wife, Lainie (Emily Bloch of Florence), undergoes in the United States while he is hostage.
“She’s an everyday woman tasked with the impossible,” Bloch said about her character, Lainie, “don’t give up hope, but somehow keep living.”
State Department operative Ellen van Os (Sheila Siragusa of Holyoke) and journalist Walker Harris (Jay Sefton of Hadley) each attempt to remedy and use the situation to their own benefit.
Siragusa, who’s returning to acting after about eight years of directing, said she has tried to make van Os’ character sympathetic toward the families of hostages.
“This allows me to make her intentions honest and her mistakes meaningful in an important way to the character,” Siragusa said later, “that makes it a lot easier to play such a formal and heady role.”
During a rehearsal Thursday at the United Church of Bernardston, the actors are relaxed and the director is candid.
Harsh tungsten light fills an expansive hall in the church, a clock ticks in front of pale blue wallpaper, ceiling fans circulate the evening breeze, and the only separation between the characters and a make-believe audience is a strip of black tape on the floor.
“What does it mean to be an American?” asks Siragusa, while standing on the imaginary stage, clicking through an imaginary slide show of terrorists.
“Well, here it means,” she continues, “for most of us — to be comfortable.” Elsewhere in the world it means to be punished. To be punished justly, some would say, for the crime of having been born here and not there.”
Despite (or perhaps because of) the simplicity of the hall, the drama is intense and incredibly emotional — a result that the director, Daniels, said is intentional.
“A four-character play is a very intimate experience, and very intense,” she said. “There’s not a lot of bells and whistles.”
“We’re focused on the actors and their engagement with the audience,” she continued. “It’s gonna be intense and stark.”
The play holds a particular emotional connection for the director, whose husband unexpectedly died about five years ago. Daniels said she can relate to the character Lainie, who is, in many respects, widowed from her husband while he is held hostage.
“I thought the creative mojo died with (my husband),” she said, adding that she didn’t think she’d ever direct plays again after the loss; however, the script of “Two Rooms” re-sparked her creativity.
The play is familiar to Daniels, who has taught scenes from it to theater students for more than a decade. In 2014, she moved to Turners Falls after a long career in theater, which included running the performing arts department at St. Lawrence University, helping to start the Arts Repertory Theatre of Portland, Ore., and Franklin County’s own Silverthorne Theater Company.
Even though it was written about 30 years ago, Daniels said audiences today will be able to connect with the characters in “Two Rooms” because westerners are still being taking hostage based on their nationality.
“It’s approachable, and (even though) it’s based in an event 30 years ago, it’s still relevant today,” she said. “People are still being held hostage, probably even as we speak. That’s one of the reasons we found it alarmingly contemporary.”
After pitching the script to the theater’s selection committee in late 2015, Daniels was chosen to be the director in early this year (the theater company will put on three plays this year).
“We wanted to have something that had good balance,” said Lucinda Kidder, managing director of the theater company. “One of our commitments was to select a play that gets people thinking about things in different ways. (‘Two Rooms’) really met our criteria.”
To prepare for the play, the cast and crew talked to Theo Padnos, a journalist who was held hostage in Syria for two years before being released in 2014, and Ted Thornton, a Middle East historian.
The result is a presentation that tackles complex questions of morality, ethical gray areas and the roles of media and government.
“Everyone’s trying to do their best,” Daniels said, “which is what makes the play so compelling.”
Daniels also said they only had a few days to practice in Sloan Theater before opening day.
Until then, the cast practiced five to six days per week at the church in Bernardston.
“Roaring applause,” says Bloch (Lainie), after Thursday’s rehearsal.
“No,” Erikson contradicts, “stunned silence.”
Admission: $19; students and seniors, $17, groups of 10 or more, $12.
For tickets and more information visit: www.silverthornetheater.org
Watch an interview with the director here: https://youtu.be/AwohKG_QZus
You can reach Andy Castillo
at: acastillo@recorder.com
or 413-772-0261, ext. 263.
On Twitter, @AndyCCastillo