Song of Extinction @ Inside the Ford ~ November 7th-December 14th ~ 2580 Cahuenga Blvd.
Currently playing at Inside the Ford is the captivating world premiere of E.M. Lewis’ new play Song of Extinction. Produced by the Moving Arts Theatre Company and exquisitely directed by Heidi Helen Davis, Song of Extinction, winner of the 2008 Ashland New Plays Festival, explores the delicate moments in life where unwanted conclusions painfully bleed into new beginnings. Set in present day Oregon, with flashbacks to Bolivia, Song of Extinction explores the extinction of human relationships, cultures, and species, plus the extinction of hope and the difference between intentional and inevitable death.
Lewis leads her ideas and perspectives through the character Khim Phan, a professor of biology originally from Cambodia, played by Darrell Kunitomi. Kunitomi is so grounded and compassionate as his character that you never feel lectured by the play's messages; only enlightened and entrusted with the fragile journey of a life all too knowledgeable of human self-extinction from the genocidal killing fields of Cambodia.
Phan is the biology teacher of a young violist, Max Forrestal (Will Faught), whose mother, Lily (Lori Yeghiayan) is dying of cancer and whose father Ellery (Michael Shutt), a more famous biologist than Phan, is desperately trying to save the rainforest that he thinks contains a cure for his wife's ailment. Faught gives a visceral performance as a son coming to terms with the fate of his mother and the renewal he must embue in the relationship with his father. Each character experiences their own different journey of extinction and in this way Lewis has successfully folded one profound theme after another into an illuminating play on harsh, yet heartfelt, themes.
The set (Stephanie Kerley Schwarts) is a gorgeous shrine to places and people who have suffered as a result of extinction: Cambodian refugees and the jungles that inhabit the mysteries of a nature left undiscovered. The lighting design (Ian P Garrett) is romantic and illuminating as it moves the audience’s imagination from jungle to hospital to classroom. And the sounds (design by Jason Duplissea) of a ticking metronome and the beeping of a heart monitor all reflect the inevitable passage of time. Time, though itself not vulnerable to extinction, is its enabler. All of these elements, along with great performances, come woven together brilliantly by Davis. Her choice to personify the three family members Phan lost in Cambodia’s genocide as shadows dressed in white, weaving in and out of the play and doubling as stage hands, serves as a necessary echo of those who are lost. Still a memory is a memory, not a living presence.
Lewis world premieres her exquisite new play in Hollywood while America is simultaneously experiencing an extinction of its old ways through a need for new beginnings. She makes a clear statement that U.S.-born people are bad at understanding the concept of extinction because, “They do not believe it will ever happen to them.” Not to undermine her work through commercialization, but Lewis’ writing is so pithy and poetic that I feel it should be seen on the license plate frames of every U.S. car: “The Place of No More Pretending.”
My only concern with Song of Extinction is that due of the weight of its central theme, it may not draw in the crowds it deserves. It is theater propelled by the need to raise social consciousness. Where necessity is the mother of invention, I fear, apathy is the breeding ground for extinction. Let Song of Extinction be heard and fill that field.
