Pulp | Arts Round Ann Arbor

Brittany Batell and Amanda Buchalter in Athena by Gracie Gardner, directed by Shelby R. Seeley at Theatre Nova. Photograph by Sean Carter Photography.

My longtime greatest pal can also be a author—a superb, super-talented poet and trainer—and I can’t let you know how typically I’ve thanked my fortunate stars that we work in solely completely different realms of the writing world.

Why?

Because the intersection of ambition and friendship is a treacherous emotional minefield, but it surely additionally gives the narrative engine for Gracie Gardner’s play Athena, now enjoying at Theatre Nova, directed by Shelby Seeley.

Focused on two 17-year-old fencers, Mary Wallace (Brittany Batell) and Athena (Jen Pan), the 80-minute play begins with them sparring. Athena, the extra expert and worldly metropolis child, goes to golf equipment, sometimes drinks, crows when she wins a bout, and lives in a small condo along with her smoker dad. Mary Wallace, in the meantime—who crumples to the ground weeping upon shedding the opening duel—loves her mother and father and marine biology, and takes the subway in from suburbia after college day-after-day to coach.

Athena—who’s adopted the goddess moniker as a form of stage title—tentatively encourages Mary Wallace to be her coaching accomplice, and a clumsy, earnest friendship between opposites takes root. Yet after they should compete towards one another for a spot on the Junior Olympic nationwide crew, their bond is strained and examined.

Any dialog about this play should begin by acknowledging its distinctive bodily calls for—fencing expertise and a great deal of combat choreography—however Theatre Nova has assembled a form of stage fight dream crew for its Athena. Pan and combat director Joe Wright are the founders of the Ypsi-based firm Theatrica Gladiatoria, which makes a speciality of “the art of dramatic violence,” and Batell and Amanda Buchalter (who seems within the play’s last scene) are licensed TG college students.

Brittany Batell and Jen Pan in Athena by Gracie Gardner, directed by Shelby R. Seeley at Theatre NOVA. Photograph by Sean Carter Photography.

So it’s not terribly shocking that the fencing bouts unfolding only a few toes from viewers members not solely look professional, however play a pivotal storytelling position. After all, the conversations between these two guarded, awkward teenage ladies are sometimes pithy, however on the piste, the place they compete, they change into extra totally embodied, and thus reveal extra totally who they’re.

Set designer Amanda Bates has reconfigured Theater Nova’s efficiency area in order that the piste bisects it, with rows of seats flanking each side. This brings viewers members proper up near the motion, making the ladies’s bouts extra visceral. Jade Guerriero’s lighting design units the suitable temper for every scene (and infrequently conveys the passage of time); Michaella Victoria’s costumes present one other reasonable, immersive layer into the world of aggressive fencing; and Kennikki Jones-Jones’ sound design provides an apt aural backdrop for the 2 buddies’ high-stakes last duel.

Brittany Batell and Jen Pan in Athena by Gracie Gardner, directed by Shelby R. Seeley at Theatre Nova. Photograph by Sean Carter Photography.

Batell and Pan each look youthful sufficient to play teenagers and have the stage fight chops to drag off Athena convincingly—one thing I’ve to consider is a uncommon casting mixture.

But Gardner’s script? While I all the time love being launched to a wholly new world (aggressive fencing), and recognize the danger Gardner took in relying so closely on bodily fight between two younger ladies as a method of storytelling, I couldn’t assist however want, by play’s finish, I’d come to really feel a stronger, deeper emotional tie to the characters.

Yes, a dialog within the last scene makes it clear that the friendship has completely modified them, however I additionally wished it to vary me a bit, too.

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Jenn McKee is a former employees arts reporter for The Ann Arbor News, the place she primarily coated theater and movie occasions, and likewise wrote normal options and occasional articles on books and music.      

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“Athena” is at Theater Nova, 410 West Huron Street, Ann Arbor, by way of August 9. Visit theatrenova.org for tickets, showtimes, and extra information.