Don’t be let out in the cold! Join Inclusive Theater

By Benjamin Joe

Stacy Kowal and Heather Benson sit across from each other in “The Go-Away Face” by Scott Mullen and directed by Shanda Gardner. Photograph Credit: Benjamin Joe

ITOWNY’s 2024 Short Play Festival is coming to St. Mary’s High School in Lancaster starting April 12-14 & 19-21.

Nine short plays will be presented to audiences by Inclusive Theater of Western New York, many of which were written by local playwrights. The plays are “Building Balanced Men in Buffalo” by Justin Karcher, “On Rooftops and Rowboats” by Bella Poyton, “Soar Spot” by Allison Fradkin, “The Merry Men of Tinder” by Madison Sedlor, “Peace in the Mist” by Adam Norton, “The Golden Girls Convention” by JB Stone, “Damn You Roger” by Mark Lloyd and “Coffee Dance” by Lynnemarie Scrivano.

Founder of the acting troupe is Aimee Levesque. She said her daughter, Jessica Levesque, was obsessed with acting, but her diagnosis of autism seemed to be shutting doors for her passion. Inflamed the English professor said if no one else would give Jessica a stage, she would. 

That’s how Inclusivity Theater started out.

“We like to give people local opportunities,” Aimee Levesque said, humbly.

People in the troop don’t have to have a disability, but they won’t be barred from it if they do. Levesque explained that many people from all different walks audition and she doesn’t shut them out. Given the correct environment, actors and actresses with disabilities can be just as professional, hard-working and successful as anyone else, she said.

And many of the actors in the troupe are professional actors, disabilities or no.

Take Hussein Mohsin, 20, for example. He started his acting career 10 months ago.

“I’ve always loved (acting) since I was young. I always was into film and stuff like that, but I never did anything because I didn’t have the courage. I didn’t think I could do it,” he said. 

However, something happened last year that Mohsin swallowed his fear and got on stage. While in college he saw the opportunity to do it and decided to pursue what he really loved.

“Even if I failed … I didn’t care if I failed. At least I know I tried,” he said.

Since then Mohsin has gathered a few credits to his portfolio: a commercial for Evergreen Health, Bomb Prom (a short film starting next month), and a small role in the same feature as Sadie Sink of Stranger Things and The Whale fame.

“Myself I have a physical disability. That was one of the reasons why I didn’t think I could do acting. (I’d say) I have a disability, I probably can’t do it,” he said.

“But then I realized it doesn’t matter what your background is, where you come from, anyone can act.”

Jessica Levesque said that self doubt wasn’t the only thing stopping people with disabilities from being among the great actors of the world. It was actual conditioning from a young age. People saying that show biz and physical or mental disabilities just didn’t mix.

“I had seen over the years how individuals with disabilities weren’t represented on film,” she said. “Or in theater. I didn’t see anything like that and I had always been into acting since I was a little girl.”

Even as a young girl Levesque said she remembers listening to the naysayers. People saying, “they won’t put up with you.”

“People in society. They didn’t treat us equally,” she said. “Especially our own teachers telling us, ‘That’s just a pipe dream. That’s not something you should pursue.'”

Determined though, the younger Levesque got her first part in another community theater group where she played a teddy bear and a shoe.

“I wanted to try it out to see if they’d put up with me,” she said.

For those parts, she said, it felt amazing because she’d just begun her career and was high on life. There was only one problem and that was she had trouble reading. She learned best from comic books, she said, and while teachers didn’t understand, her mother did.

“She said, ‘Literacy is literacy’,” Levesque remembered. “’She’s still learning, just a different way.’”

Levesque was able to get through the parts, and the inclusive approach appears to be working. The elder Levesque explained, that while it is a cliché, “diversity is beautiful.”

“Disability is what we’re good at, but also we work with different people of different cultures, different backgrounds,” she said. “So this is a safe space like some of the plays do have gay characters. Characters from other countries. Because that’s important to us, because diversity is beautiful, and that’s what it’s like. I mean that’s what the world is like.

“For so long people have spoken on behalf of people with disabilities. And they do that to people of different cultures, too. But it’s time they got their voice back and that is so important to me.”

As for the cast, it’s not about money or fame. Geno Delmaro, also an owner of a roofing company, fell into theater three-years ago.

“I met a girl in a bar and she’s a writer/director/actress and she let me audition for something after we started talking for awhile, and she gave me the part,” he said.

Delmaro said that he’d originally thought that that acting was a “one and done” experience, but he couldn’t keep away. That first part “snowballed” into other things, including parts in Inclusive Theater’s Nine Short Plays.

Delmaro plays a mysterious suitor in “Coffee Dance” and the much tormented Bills fan in “Building Balanced Men in Buffalo.” It’s not cutting into his day job, but he enjoys himself.

“I fall off a roof once a year,” he joked. “There’s really no money in this, but it’s a lot of fun. Especially in Buffalo.”

Opening night happens Friday and Inclusive Theater is holding its breath and crossing its fingers. Find out  more at inclusivetheaterofwny.com.

The White Devil: Webster’s tale revisited

By Benjamin Joe

Ian Michalski plays Monticelso, the evil cardinal who condemns Vittoria as Giovanni (Connor Snodgrass) and Cornelia (Stephanie Bax) sit, left to right. Photo Credit: Benjamin Joe

The White Devil hits the stage at the American Repertory Theater of Western New York on Thursday, April 11.

The author of this adaptation of the tragedy by John Webster, Charlie McGregor, also the co-director of the performance, said that he had come upon the work while studying abroad. He picked out “the whore” speech from it and started using it in auditions.

“If you don’t know ‘the whore’ speech you’ll know it when you see it,” he said.

McGregor also noted that “a lot of fluff” had been taken out of the play to make it more palatable for the audience. The original script is over 400-years old.

“Sometimes in plays back then there tended to be too much exposition and not getting to the point. Our attention span, over the years, has gone down and I think that we’re used to ping-pong conversation now,” he said.

For the sake of time (the original script is about five hours long) six characters were cut out of the play, and the ending has been adapted. Still there is plenty here that modern and classical audiences alike can appreciate.

Speaking to co-director Ari Lasting, she talked of the way women were presented in this adaptation of The White Devil.

“Victoria is already a strong character,” she said. “So it’s finding more moments to give her that autonomy in a world where she had negative autonomy. Finding and creating even more moments to give her that autonomy and independence in a world that was trying to keep that away from her was super fun.

“But something we created out of nothing was the character of Isabella who really, for lack of a better term, in the original script didn’t really exist. Was kind of one note.”

The White Devil’s plot is somewhat convoluted, as McGregor stated. A murderous row of circumstances envelope these characters with lust and power being the two linchpins upon which the audience’s fascination is poured upon.

First there is Vittoria, played by Heather Casseri, a young woman of a noble but poor house, married to a drunkard, Camillo, fabulously played by Justin Pope, and who’s sibling, Flamineo, played expertly by Andrew Zuccari, seeks higher station for himself. Their mother, Cornelia, bemoaning her children, is played by Stephanie Bax.

Through Flamineo’s encouragement, Duke Brachiano, played in emotional heights by Johnny Barden, pursues Vittoria, and rages against his own wife, Isabella, played by Camilla Maxwell — also emotionally brilliant — who has returned to Rome with their son, Giovanni, played by Connor Snodgrass.

Camilla Maxwell, playing Isabella, next to Johnny Barden, playing Brachiano. Photo Credit: Benjamin Joe

The stage is set for infamy, but the aforesaid relevancy of this new adaptation shines through.

“A couple of the additional scenes we created were centered around (Isabella) to give her a little more background. She has the first scene with Lodovico (played by Steven Maiseke). We gave her a little more background with him and that relationship. We gave her a little more background with her son to flush out that relationship and show that she really had the hand in raising this boy and making him the moral leader he became at the end of the play,” Lasting said.

“(Camilla) portrays it so well with such a gravitas and strength to her. (It was great) finding those moments where we could take another woman who is told what to do and where to go and who to marry and who to not be married to, and  give her that (determination that), ‘this is my choice and this is my life and I can do what I want!’ That whole ‘ode to be a man’ speech that Camilla does so well?

“I think that really reflects on what we were trying to do in this play.”

That question of autonomy, independence, continues throughout the production. Ian Michalski plays Monticelso, the cardinal, lashing out his list of judgements against Vittoria, finally condemning her to a convent of “penitent whores” as masterfully as any right wing bigot can on YouTube.

“Ian’s character was definitely a tricky one with the original text. He’s this evil character and he has these moments of evil, these moments of ‘you should be beholden’,” Lasting said. “I think it’s a tough juxtaposition and think Ian’s navigating it very well.

“The text is super difficult for that character and making sure that throughline of that he’s not a good guy and puppet mastering does come through.”

Other pieces of the story come together in the second act of the play as the characters, especially that of Francisco, played by David Wysocki, Isabella’s brother, as he wrestles with letting his loss lie, or seeking revenge.

“The story I’m trying to tell is that faith can be a little tricky,” McGregor said. “We tend to begin our lives in faith whether it be some kind of religion or some kind spirituality and we turn to it in times of joy, desperation, anger, solace and sometimes these ideas of the seven deadly sins and ideas of selfishness and stubbornness come through us and affect us. Sometimes we have obstacles in life that are either self-inflicted or come from a test of faith or circumstance.

“And I notice that when people are at their lowest point, or highest point, they turn to faith in some sort of way. I think this play brings a lot of challenges, but each character has to play with this idea of the battle of revenge versus mortality.

“Is the satisfaction of the revenge — the death of your sister, your loved one — is everything that costs you that revenge worth it? Or is it the harshness of morality and doing what’s right and justice (the best course)? Because a lot of the times the easy thing is the wrong decision and the right decision, the just decision, is always the most arduous decision. I hope people reflect after the show and say in their own live, ‘how petty do I need to be in order to get my fill of life? Or should I look to the high road?’”

Still, the brightest point of this play is not that of a contemporary of Shakespeare, written only 150 years after the Bard’s advent, and still playing with the ideas of human vice and hubris when it’s clear to the audience that forces of emotion are the strong river that dictates the outcomes. Instead it is a very relevant look at today’s battle with equality, specifically between men and women and how they are supposed to act.

“There’s no whore in this play,” McGregor said. “It’s a woman who finds a better love. Someone who connects with her more. Someone that can give her what she wants more. 

“And back then, and even in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and even today sometimes, there’s this disgusting look at women, who are trying to find what they want. Being honest and open and free without men being misogynistic, men sexualizing women, men not taking women seriously for standing their ground and pushing their power like they deserve, so this is an awesome place to showcase some of those things as well.”

More information about the performance can be found at artofwny.org.