A new theater company in western Massachusetts is making its debut with a show that involves a teenage Ritalin dealer, a life-size rapper puppet and a very optimistic road trip.
Why’s It Gotta Be? Theater Group, also known as WIGB, will present its first-ever production at CitySpace in Easthampton from Friday, May 22, through Sunday, May 31. Performances run Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., with weekend matinees on Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. That play, Jacob Richmond’s “Legoland,” is a one-hour, two-actor dark comedy with immersive elements. It’s also a prequel to Richmond’s musical “Ride The Cyclone.”
The show follows siblings Penny and Ezra Lamb, who grew up on a hippie compound in Canada. After their parents are arrested for growing marijuana, the siblings are sent to a Catholic school in “Legoland” — the outside world, that is. There, the two are outcasts. When Penny listens to a CD by the popular boyband Seven Up, she falls in love with the lead singer, Johnny Moon. However, Moon soon rebrands himself as a violent, misogynistic rapper named JK-47, and the siblings go on a cross-country bus trip, paid for by selling Ezra’s ADHD medications along the way, to meet Moon in person and convince him to change his ways.
Julia Adamo, who plays Penny, said the show is “for the kids who thought they were weird growing up or who were weird growing up. It’s for anyone who has never felt like they belonged, whether they know why or whether they don’t know why.”
The setup of “Legoland” places the audience as observers of the Lambs giving a PowerPoint presentation about the trip as part of Penny’s probation. Throughout the presentation, Ezra uses puppets and impressions to help his sister tell the story. In this production, Moon is represented by an unsightly, life-size puppet with a head wrapped in bandages, eyes made of blue bottle caps and legs made of pool noodles.
“That’s our beautiful boy, back from the hospital,” Devin Dumas, president of WIGB and director of “Legoland,” said of the puppet at a recent run-through. “His head came off last rehearsal.”
Terrance Peters, who plays Ezra, said that although his character is “constantly performing — one of his early lines is, ‘I don’t exist’” — he still sees him as “a very genuine character” whose love of performance shows deep earnestness.
“Everything he feels, he feels very strongly. He does not hide a lot of his thoughts and emotions,” Peters said. “I think it’s wonderful, because a lot of times, we have a chaotic character and that can tend toward negative traits, but I think … he genuinely loves and appreciates his relationship with his sister.”
Adamo describes the siblings as “extremely precocious and kind of too smart for their own good.” While they are more open-minded than their bullying classmates, they remain sheltered in a way that isolates them from peers. Penny, she adds, is like Anne of Green Gables “to a tee — so enthusiastic, cannot stop talking, has so many ideas and just wants to connect with people over them.”
This show takes the original script and adds immersive elements: as Ezra talks about peddling his ADHD meds, he comes through the audience and does just that. Fortunately, the “meds” are safe — they’re just Tic Tacs in empty pill bottles, distributed to the audience for free.
“We filled 100 bottles with these. I want them gone,” Dumas noted dryly.
In fact, the actors are in character from the time the two of them open the doors 30 minutes before the show. “The dark joy of possibly having to wrangle in an audience in character is both terrifying, but also thrilling,” Peters said.
“Come early,” he added. “Put us to the test!”
Dumas said that the company’s goal is to provide fresh, queer and gender-diverse theater to western Mass.
“Some of us found that we kept just waiting for the next theater group to do something new or unheard of or queer or gender-diverse,” he said. “And after getting tired of waiting to see what comes next, we said, ‘Why don’t we just be the space that’s always doing that?’”
The company got its name from questions Dumas had heard far too often about queer media. “I’ve been [asked] a lot, ‘Why’s it gotta be gay?’ “Why’s it gotta be queer?’ ‘Why’s it gotta be trans?’ ‘Why’s it gotta be this or that?’ And after hearing that for 27 years, it becomes really monotonous,” he said.
As a result, the company’s name serves as something of a reclamation. “No one could say, ‘Why’s it gotta be queer or gay?’ anymore, because that’s the whole point,” he said.
Although this play doesn’t have such overt themes of queerness or gender diversity as other shows do, minus the homophobia directed at Penny, part of its value for a new theater company is that it’s lesser-known in the area than other productions.
Although this play doesn’t feature themes of queerness or gender diversity as overt as other shows do — aside from the homophobia directed at Penny, whom classmates call a lesbian just because they think she’s uncool — part of its value for a new theater company is that it’s lesser-known in the area than other productions.
“We’re trying to steer away from the large, big-budget, big-name stuff because we feel like other people are going to do that,” he said. “So let’s do the stuff that other people aren’t going to do but that is still great in its own right.”
In addition, Dumas said, “One of the things we’re trying to do is exceed expectations. I feel like when a lot of people see a new theater group, they might think, ‘Oh, they are probably going to have to cut corners, and it might not be up to par as what it could be in five years. I really want to try to exceed that expectation and really bring this cool, fresh, exciting show and have it look like all the corners are refined when we’re showing up on day one.”
No spoilers, but Penny’s meeting with Moon doesn’t go exactly as anyone planned.
“The show is, despite all appearances, incredibly optimistic, and it’s really about finding those little joys in life of being uniquely you and picking the things that you really, really love, and it’s so beautiful,” said Peters. “It’s my favorite kind … a show that is like, ‘Oh, we’re gonna be silly, we’re gonna be dark and we’re also going to do all these things, and the 13-year-old’s a drug dealer.’ But then ultimately, the actual point to all that, once you get engaged enough to dig through all of it, is a very giant heart at the middle of it. It’s my favorite kind of story to tell.”
“Legoland” contains adult language. Tickets are $25. For more information about Why’s It Gotta Be? Theater Group, visit wigbtheater.org.
