By Eva Trieger
LA JOLLA, California –If you’re old enough to remember Dr. Seuss’ The Sneetches then you will understand the message of Tribes. This play is essentially describing the phenomenon of inclusion and exclusion. When we recognize others who look like us, dress like us, and talk like us, we know they are one of us. But what if they are deaf? Suddenly, they cannot fit into our prescriptive model, and they are forced out of our circle. This is Billy’s (Russell Harvard) story.
Under David Cromer’s direction, Nina Raine’s story was relayed to a full house, including a healthy showing from the deaf community. We were treated to several signers who will attend multiple performances as well as captioning scattered throughout the play.
This story focuses on an exceedingly intellectual, dysfunctional, Jewish family. Billy, the eldest son, and only deaf child, has returned home to share the nuclear family’s nest with his literary parents, and siblings, Ruth (Dina Thomas) and Dan (Thomas DellaMonica). It is clear that all are well-read, intelligent and self-expressed. While there is gratuitous use of offensive language, the family appears to care for each other in a bizarre and verbally abusive mode.
When Billy meets Sylvia (Meghan O’Neill), a young woman who is losing her hearing, his world view changes. Suddenly, under her tutelage he learns sign language and is exposed to the deaf community. This opening of doors causes him to question his childhood and challenge his parents about their love and acceptance of him. For perhaps the first time, he stands up to them, and tells them how, for all of his life, he felt excluded from their conversations, literary references, and acerbic jokes.
Billy’s father, Christopher (Jeff Still) and mother, Beth (Lee Roy Rogers) deny his claim, and blame Sylvia, for corrupting him and making him act in such a paranoid and ungrateful manner. While the family concurs that “signing is Jewish”, and part of their familial communication pattern as Jews, Christopher is horrified by the notion of Billy’s conformity and integration in the Deaf world as the worst kind of insult and betrayal. All he has tried to do was to spare Billy from this sense of identification.
The siblings, particularly, Dan, feel attacked by Billy’s foray into the larger world. Dan’s own emotional and mental problems surface as he feels he is losing his big brother to Sylvia and the Deaf world. His demise is characterized by drug use and a psychotic break, where he hears voices. Dan’s downward spiral hits bottom when Billy moves out of the family home and moves in with Sylvia.
There is a subplot at work here, but I’ve no wish to be a spoiler, so I’ll suffice it to say, that Sylvia has her own fears that undermine her relationship with Billy. She is mourning her own loss and feels her attachment to Billy further takes her into the Deaf world and if she stays with him, she will be officially one of Them. She is not ready to leave the world of Us, the Hearing world, just yet.
This poignant play is artfully done and affords us a window in Raine’s creative process. She grew up in “Hearing, garrulous” family but started to see how tribes form everywhere. She described a visit to the Williamsburg community in New York City, where she observed Orthodox Jews. In this enclave she saw an extended family, replete with all of its blessings and curses. Raines noted what it meant to be an insider and how it felt to be an outsider. Tribes was born of this yearning to belong and the perceived membership fee for admittance to such a club. It plays at the La Jolla Playhouse through July 21
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Trieger is a freelance writer focusing on the arts. She may be contacted at eva.trieger@sdjewishworld.com