Rogue Artists Ensemble, Los Angeles LGBT Center, and the Contemporary American Theater Festival’s Happy Fall: A Queer Stunt Spectacular is brimming with impressive craft. Jack Pullman’s puppetry design, aided in design and construction by Morgan Rebane, Greg Ballora, and Kelsey Kato, is clean, polished, and when deftly maneuvered by the capable ensemble, seems to breathe and move as if brought to life. Miniatures crafted by Adrian Rose Leonard are witty and bring levity and charm to the somber subject matter. Andrew Jordan’s costume design—especially when displayed in a drag runway sequence, is inventive with its silhouettes and industrious in its whimsy. Director Sean Cawelti has crafted a handful of stunning visuals that punctuate the narrative with video projection, meticulously rendered puppet choreography, and a particularly stunning sequence with pyrotechnics.
Unfortunately, the production is not equal to the sum of all its beautifully-crafted parts. The overall effect of the evening is a sort of messily earnest attempt by a team that has bitten off more than they can chew. The plot, credited to Lisa Sane Dring along with the Ensemble, meanders through statistics presented as though to a captive audience at a corporate seminar and fails to ultimately find any emotional backbone upon which to hang its overt messaging about misogyny, homophobia, and racism in the stunt industry and Hollywood’s film industry as a whole. Repeated claims by the Host that we are witnessing a reimagining of classic tropes and reclaiming of space feel at odds with the generic story being spun about two male stunt performers embarking on some semblance of a relationship. I wanted this show to be the subversive, nuanced, take-down of the status quo the Host kept telling me I was witnessing, but the goods were just not there to back up the claims.
The plot presents little dramatic tension and fails to build in any direction except the repeated arguments get louder and involve more shouting. Nothing really happens, and in attempting to shoehorn elements of puppetry and video design which do not stem from any necessity of storytelling but rather feel like an attempt to incorporate Rogue Artists’ expertise into a dry narrative, the entire story has been made muddy and unclear. At no point does this text call for any of the bells and whistles put upon it, and rather than enhancing the piece, the bells and whistles seem to weigh down the framework and expose its un-theatricality.
Ensemble member Gabriel Croom is captivating with an impressive showing of gymnastic tricks, but otherwise, the ‘stunts’ feel strangely anticlimactic. It would be a tall order to find performers with the stunt capabilities and theatrical backgrounds to carry off what this show is attempting to do, but this again feels like the narration is telling us one thing while our eyes are revealing another. The framing device of the theme park stunt show feels like it needs repeated explanation and justification, and I wish the evening had been presented as a drag show as it would have been more within this artistic team’s capabilities.
This was my first time seeing a piece presented by Rogue Artists Ensemble, and I am enticed and excited to see more! I hope they move forward with programming that calls for the type of storytelling they obviously love rather than trying to apply their theatricality to subject matter that may be better explored through other avenues. If you’ve already purchased tickets to see Happy Fall, you will certainly be treated to a clever evening of theatrical artistry, even if you are not emotionally invested in the material.
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