FST’s Stage III stages genetics drama with premiere of ‘Babel’
Florida Studio Theatre has been waiting a long time to produce Jacqueline Goldfinger’s new play “Babel,” which it has been helping her develop for about four years.
The play is set in a near future when medical testing of embryos can determine potential behavioral issues among children, and government rules determine what parents must do about them or face a kind of banishment.
Director Catherine Randazzo, an associate artist at FST, said she and Goldfinger had been talking for a while about a project they could work on together when Producing Artistic Director Richard Hopkins said he was looking for a play that tackles the issue of abortion “from both sides and didn’t alienate people.” There hadn’t been one, he thought, since Jane Martin’s provocative “Keely and Du,” which was first produced in 1993.
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Goldfinger dove into the idea, using her own experience giving birth to twin boys as inspiration, and quickly wrote a 40-page outline that developed into a full script that received a workshop performance in 2019 in Sarasota.
The play was later selected by the National New Play Network for its rolling world premiere program, which arranges different productions at theaters across the country. There are usually three “premieres” over a year’s time. But “Babel” had five productions before it begins Jan. 18 to launch FST’s Stage III series of provocative, potentially more controversial plays in its Bowne’s Lab Theatre. The series also includes Anna Ziegler’s “The Last Match,” beginning Feb. 22, and the world premiere of Etan Frankel’s “Paralyzed,” beginning March 29.
All three shows were planned for the Stage III series last season before it was canceled because of issues related to COVID.
Goldfinger said Sarasota audiences will benefit from the wait because she has been able to rewrite and tinker with the script after each of the earlier productions.
“The audience is very lucky. It’s not the same play. We had a chance to work out what we hope were the majority of the kinks,” she said in a Zoom interview. “Often times playwrights don’t know how well the literary work on the page is going to translate onto the stage in performance. Catherine has been a great part of the process and offering feedback, and hopefully what you will see is the version that will be published.”
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Creating something new and personal
Goldfinger said she wanted to tell a story she hadn’t seen before on stage
“The last thing an audience needs is to see four plays on the same topic that cover the same ground,” she said.
Rather than a play about abortion, she crafted a story about broader reproductive questions. She recalled that when she was pregnant with her twins – now healthy and 10 – “we had some iffy test results. They’re fine now, but I started researching in-utero testing and I was surprised to learn that the United States is ground zero for in-utero testing. There are fewer regulations on that type of testing. You can choose the gender of your child, you can choose the hair color and the eye color.”
She considered how much further that could go. “I’m interested in the personal dynamics and cultural dynamics of what happens when we can select the traits of our children. We can not only select physical traits, but also emotional and behavioral traits.”
Her story involves two expectant couples who are best friends. Anique Clements, who previously appeared in FST’s “The Nether” and “Kunstler,” plays Renee, opposite Rachel Moulton, a veteran of many productions at the theater, as her partner Dani. Lucy Lavely, a graduate of the FSU/Asolo Conservatory, makes her FST debut as Ann, partnered with Tom Patterson (“Hand to God” and “Cherry Docs”) as Jamie.
As the play develops, the couples face difficult decisions that put them at odds over a variety of legal and spiritual issues.
“All of us have been in situations with someone we love very much, whether a friend or partner, but we have a basic moral difference of opinion,” Goldfinger said. “That’s where the humanity with the audience comes in, taking this experience and framing it.”
She said the play is not focused on issues that are being debated by ethicists “so it’s a great time to bring it into mainstream conversation. No matter how you feel about it, over the next 10 years or so it’s going to be a huge part of the conversation. What do we regulate and what do we not regulate?”
The playwright said she chose a near future for the play’s setting to provide an “opportunity to talk about conversations we have to have now. I see theater as a living art, not something that has to last forever. If you write a play that people read forever, that’s great. But if in 10 years this play is dated and no one reads it, that’s ok, too.”
Randazzo said she and the cast members have had some deep conversations “that had our heads spinning by the end of the day. I would go home and have visions in my head and every day we come in with a new thought or a new thing to talk about. The light bulb went off three times this morning in today’s session. We are all still baffled about what can be, what will be.”
Like past Stage III productions, “Babel” will have minimalistic design elements, “which is what it should be,” Randazzo said. “We don’t need to create this elaborate visual world of the future. We’re focusing on the words and the characters.”
“Babel”
By Jacqueline Goldfinger. Directed by Catherine Randazzo.” Presented by Florida Studio Theatre’s Stage III Series, Jan. 18-Feb. 10 in the Bowne’s Lab Theatre, 1265 First St., Sarasota. Tickets are $18-$39. 941-366-9000; floridastudiotheatre.org
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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Parents battle government rules on genetics in FST premiere of ‘Babel’
