 "Photo: Caleb Miller; The Daily Texan")
Taking the laboratory theatre stage by storm is “Portrait,” written by master’s student Jenny Connell.
Playwright Connell’s initial inspiration for the play came seven years ago when she saw a gallery of work by Alice Neel. After years of research, Connell wrote the play about a year ago.
Neel was a portrait painter, born in Pennsylvania in 1900 and schooled at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women. While her influences included the darker side of Spanish painting and the expressionism of Northern Europe and Scandinavia, she had a unique style. Although she was a painter of urban areas, landscapes, still lifes and people, her most famous work came about around 1970 when she began painting her family and a series of nudes.
Neel became a famous painter and lecturer and was the first woman to be honored with her own show at the Whitney Museum of Modern Art in New York.
“I was immediately taken by her portraits, which felt like a gallery full of characters waiting to be written,” Connell said.
“Portrait” seeks to portray not only Neel’s life but also the struggles of an artist. Neel was a female artist in a field dominated by men and was a portrait painter in a time when portraits had been abandoned for photographs.
The play also deals with Neel’s attempted balance between being an artist and a mother. Neel’s children were her most frequent subjects in her paintings, but the play seeks to ask if they were more subjects than sons to Neel.
“The play is about the challenge of navigating the roles of artist and mother — artist and person, really — and the struggle between Alice and her sons to control how they see the world and how they are seen by the world, both on Alice’s canvas and off,” Connell said.
Further, the play engages the audience by asking what can and cannot be portrayed in art and about the fullness of life.
“I’m trying to get at the difference between what can be captured on canvas, on a stage and the broader, richer life that exists around and outside of each,” Connell said.
In the small time left before the play’s opening night, the cast, crew and playwright are overcoming challenges to perfect the production.
“There have been a lot of obstacles, but I’ve had support on all sides. It’s been a delight every step of the way,” Connell said.
Through set design, sewing costumes, vocal exercises and run-throughs of the play, the group has enjoyed putting the play together.
“It’s been incredible. This is the first play I’ve directed. I couldn’t have asked for a more generous and talented group my first time out,” Connell said. “Everyone’s given so much time, energy, insight to this project.”
The play promises to challenge and engage its audiences, and to grab their attention.
“Neel’s story is an incredible one,” Connell said. “It’s a play about families, and we all struggle with that. And a lot of us struggle between what we’re supposed to be and what we want to be.”
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