Theatre Play: Animals out of Paper (Rajiv Joseph)

Today I met up with Meenakshi Mukerji. She's an absolutely lovely person, and you might know some of her superb modular designs. She also has a fabulous website, which I usually consult when I'm searching for modular pieces to fold.

We went to the SF Playhouse, which is currently running Animals out of Paper by Rajiv Joseph. I really enjoyed the play, and was positively surprised by how well the playwright captured many aspects of origami (although he does not do origami himself).
The play uses origami as an allegory, and I have to say he did a very good job of it. One of the comparisons that is made, and which really sticked in my mind is the following. You start off with (or as) an uncreased square - a clean slate. Then you add folds - make experiences, and it changes the way you are. You get new dimensions, you become a more complex shape, personality. Sometimes you may want to go back. And you may try to unfold, try to reach that uncreased square again. But the experiences you made will have left their traces. So while you can go back to being a flat square sheet of paper, you will not be the same as before. The experiences you made will have left – in the context of pain – their scars. So you can never truly go back. [Two of the main characters recently experienced a great loss, and the third has had his share of pain. I do think experiences don't only leave scars, but also ... well, happy memories. The comparison with scars does fit very well, though.]

I don't want to give away too much of the play, but if you're in the area (or it's showing somewhere else), I highly recommend it. It's a great script, and the actors really played the roles very authentically.

And I guess we were lucky. Rajiv Joseph (the playwright), and the three actors (Lorri Holt, David Deblinger, Aly Mawji) were there to answer questions after the play, and so were Robert Lang and Linda Mihara. By the way, the set included pieces folded by Robert Lang, Linda Mihara, Meenakshi Mukerji, Bernard Peyton, and Jeremy Shafer. [There might have been others, too.] And one of the actors, Aly Mawji, learned how to fold one of the props used in the play, so he's folding the pieces they need folded anew for each performance.

Location: 533 Sutter Street, San Francisco, CA (USA)
Website: http://sfplayhouse.org
Playing: 19th January 2010 – 27th February 2010

Happy theatre visiting,

-- Sara