Lonely Planet is set in the late 1980s, in the midst of the AIDS epidemic. Stacey Spain, director of the Brüka Theatre production, says that Dietz 'came up at the height of the AIDS crisis, and he lost, as did many folks in theater, a generation of friends and colleagues … He wrote this play for a couple of his friends who are queer, gay men, and who wanted a way to express what that experience was like for them.' Spain says that the play 'has a lot of humor, it has empathy, and it is at its base the story of friendship.'
The play follows two characters: Jody, who owns a small map store, and Carl, who in the course of the play brings a number of chairs to the shop. Each of the chairs belonged to people they had known who have died of AIDS. 'The way that we choose to memorialize folks can be different for everyone,' Spain continued, 'and sometimes that physical object that holds memory, holds the shape of them even, has held their weight. All of these things that those chairs represent, and then the accumulation of them, are all so important to think about.'
What kind of experience can the audience expect? 'We're inviting the audience into the world of these two characters,' Spain says. 'And so folks who are old enough to have a referent might go all the way back there and consider people that they have lost, and people who have not been directly touched by this disease may have also in their life experienced loss … At the end of the play, I would hope that the audience would honor and embrace and work actively to keep their friends in their lives.'
Brüka Theatre's production of Steven Dietz's Lonely Planet, starring Rod Hearn and Bradford Kai’ai’ai and directed by Stacey Spain, is presented January 16-31 at Brüka Theatre in Reno. bruka.org for tickets and information.
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Support for 'Arts on the Airwaves' comes from The Nevada Arts Council… a state agency that provides public funding and support to artists and organizations, that benefit Nevadans in cities and rural communities statewide. More at NVArtsCouncil.org.
