Imago Theatre Presents the World Premiere of THE REUNION

John, her husband, is continually ignored. Delores, his wife, tells all she meets that she's dying. The soon-to-be-gone and the invisible, Carol Triffle's motifs are lightly cloaked in this existential comedy of bad manners at a high school reunion. Triffle's universe questions, comments, and insults with fire-words skewering each character. All are alone and desperate for companionship yet bound by their aloneness. Live music jolts the absurdity to bubbly heights and side tracks serious moments into comedic ditches. The Reunion can't be codified and flies like a wild aircraft ricocheting off muddy memories, regrets and the uncertainty of hope. Delores is an enthusiastic but reluctant pilot of her life. On her one and last night's voyage, Delores refuses to touch down. Nonetheless all is good when she lands smooth, easy and unharmed (almost.)

Returning the Imago boards, after a six-year haitus is one of Triffle's most acclaimed clown herione's Danielle Vermette who plays the lead role of Delores. Artistic Co-director, Jerry Mouawad plays opposite Vermette, as her husband John, both characters appeared in Triffle's 2008 The Dinner. Mouawad asked Vermette this about The Reunion rehearsals, now in it's third month.

Mouawad: There seems to be a lot of folly and fun in The Reunion rehearsals. How have each of her plays been for you in terms of "play" and "foley" during the process?
Vermette: The Reunion has been especially fun in rehearsal, almost to a worrisome degree at times! Often in Carol's shows, the set-up seems to involve fairly run-of-the-mill life stuff (woman hosts dinner, gets new job, wants to go to a casino...you know, every day stuff) and you have these sort of "Everypeople" who desperately want something and spend the play bumping into others who desperately want something else, and the challenge is to mine the deeper and darker subjects that are universal to people (fear, insecurity, identity). Exploring that friction, finding those places, can be uncomfortable work and make for uncomfortable rehearsals. In The Reunion, though, the darkest of all of her comedies in some ways, or at least the most contextually specific, the pressure is to honor the parts of frivolity in the script without trivializing something that's legitimately, genuinely devastating. For whatever weird reason, that pressure has created a lighter rehearsal vibe. Go figure! It's some weird law of opposites, I suppose."

June 9 through June 24 at Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Avenue,
Fridays and Saturdays @ 7:30 and one Sunday performance at 2pm on June 18. Tickets are $10-$20 pay what you will and can be purchased by calling Imago at 503.231.9581 or TicketsWest at 503.224.8499 or online at ticketswest.com.

Photo credit: Nathan Hansen