'Six Hands,' one woman, and inanimate objects

When I saw a poster proclaiming a "World Premiere Show," the cynic in me snickered and muttered, "Yeah, a world premiere because no one else on Earth would perform it! Ha!" Well, Stacie Lents's, SY '00, performance of Six Hands proved me wrong: no one else could perform it.

KATHERINE ALDRICH/YH Stacie Lents, SY '00, speaks to her supporting actor.

Lents' senior project brings Eric H. Weinberger's one-woman show to life. Lents brings impressive experience with her, having acted in many plays for Yale, the Yale School of Drama, and even off-Broadway productions, including O'Neill's Bread and Butter for the Provincetown Playhouse in New York City. With such a background in theater, one might think she would be blinded by the spotlight, unable to see the audience. But as a result of her experience, she manages to see right into each and every person. Her ability to make such powerful connections makes one feel no longer simply an audience member, but a guest in her home.

Gathered in the Whitney Humanities Center, the audience meets three women from different generations of a family at the horrible moment when the girls grow up. Lents begins her venture into the three lives as Evelyn, a young woman in the '50s who struggles to make herself into a Donna Reed homemaker by resisting every passion within her, especially her desire to play Gershwin. With a smile she talks of her troubles as both a mother and wife, creating a dichotomy between her outer, sweet glaze, and an inner core of bitterness. This is evident in scenes where she scarfs down aspirin, cheerily mentioning her philandering husband. She shows the gall welling up within her as she grates a lemon rind to make a pie for her husband. While grating the bitter fruit's skin, she also grates away her smile, and the audience sees deeper and deeper within her character.

The staging of this scene breaks a cardinal rule of theater: in order to let Evelyn's frustration surface she turns her back on the audience. By closing off the audience, Evelyn shows her whole world falling, as she hides a fist behind her back. Lents is able to create so much life on stage by milking elements that typically dry up performances.

In the following scene, Lents becomes Andrea, the daughter that nagged her mother, as the set morphs from a McCall's kitchen into a beanbag chair and beads interior. The strain of Evelyn's cheek-to-cheek grin resonates in Andrea's spread legs, as she reminisces about her slew of lovers in college, one of which got her pregnant. Lents uses a plastic baby doll as her baby to try to make it seem real. Though initially it seems as if she fails to bring the doll to life, when she later acknowledges that it was just a baby doll and casts it away, the whole audience reacts with horror. Although she purposely shows the lifelessness in a baby doll, Lents also brings life to inanimate objects, such as the telephone.

Theater

Six Hands Written by Eric H. Weinberger Directed by Toni Dorfman Fri., Apr. 14, and Sat., Apr. 15, 8 p.m. Whitney Humanities Center $2

Lents makes mere appliances her instruments to stir the audience in the final scene as well. She plays the lost daughter, Nina, a paralegal celebrating her 30th birthday by waiting for a man to call her. This scene marks the culmination of Lents' refusal to play by the rules of theater. Nina shows her true tenderness by again turning away from the audience to slip out of her work gear. She also has powerful exchanges with an answering machine, though who hasn't had furious contests with the voice mail demon? At one point in her passionate exchanges with the telephone, however, it is hard to believe that a real person is on the other end—Nina manages to get herself worked up over a telemarketer. I mean, aren't they all robots anyway? The climax of this scene occurs over the telephone, as Andrea searches for her birth mother.

I joined in the standing ovation at the end, but felt a bit silly. I would have rather rushed the stage to sit down and talk with these three women—they had become the audience's friends. Indeed, such puns as "six thumbs up," which a "colleague" suggested, would exploit this production, because this show breaks through the scrim of disengagement between audience and actor, and those of us watching are invited to come take part in the life of three distinct women.

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