“Every time I read this play, I feel less alone.” –GT Upchurch (Performances Magazine, p.11)
By Eric George Tauber
SAN DIEGO — Meet the Garcia family. They don’t discuss things in the Garcia house. They yell. And the exclamation points are followed by tense, pregnant silences. Today, Mama is fit to be tied. Her daughter Theresa has been suspended for some “inappropriate behavior” at school.
“I say things to you and it hits a wall.”
Applause for Nataysha Rey as Theresa who tries to scale the wall and talk –really talk- to her mother. She’s bright and articulate, but this is a subject no mother’s ears can abide.
“I cannot accept a reality that doesn’t have a reason.”
A portrait of the once happy and whole family looms large in the kitchen. Today is an anniversary, but not a happy one. Their son, Jesse -once a funny, charismatic and promising young man- became a random victim in a school shooting one year ago.
Amping up the angst, Drew Davis, the shooter’s father is coming to dinner and the “vultures” from the press are eating it up. Cameras flash like a strobe light whenever someone comes through the door. It’s tense and difficult on everyone. What do you say to the father of the maniac who gunned down your son? How do you break bread together? Can you see in him a fellow victim, a grieving father who also lost a son to violence, or is he an accessory to the crime?
Davis wants to remember his son as the happy child he once was, not as the monster he became. The Garcia’s can’t see him any other way. Hats off to Liza Colón-Zayas as Tia Amanda. She’s smart and strong with a commanding presence. When she has something to say, she has a way of holding you in her gaze, giving you no room for escape.
Playwright Nick Gandiello wanted to capture onstage a picture from the news of two people from opposite sides of an act of violence embracing in shared grief. He could well have been talking about San Diego’s Tariq Khamisa Foundation. When Tariq was gunned down by Tony Hicks, a teenage boy caught up in a gang, his father, Azim chose to see victims on both sides of the gun. Reaching out to the family of the shooter, they now work together to prevent violence among young people. (www.tkf.org)
The Sages teach us that a loved one is only truly gone when there is no one left to remember them. When Davis asks the Garcias to tell him about Jesse, they speak with such joy and affection, it’s like he’s still with them … until they remember that he isn’t.
Scenic Designer Andrew Boyce created a deep gulf between the set and the house eerily lit by a black light. Perhaps it’s to illuminate the gulf of between us and them. We can sympathize, but only those who have lost a loved one to violence can ever truly understand.
The Blameless is heartbreaking, but our hearts break together. And isn’t that what we go to the theatre for?
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Tauber is a freelance writer specializing in coverage of the arts. He may be contacted via eric.tauber@sdjewishworld.com