Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Moving Arts Theatre
Through July 19
RECOMMENDED
Sorry, written by Melissa R. Randel and co-directed by Randel and Larry Biederman, opens on a bizarre, rather unsettling image: three women, not young, dressed in varying undergarments (costumes by Rosalida Medina), stand on their respective chairs, their necks encircled by a yellow ribbon whose other end suspends from the ceiling. A song signifying wistful regret, reminiscent of a French ballad, filters through the background, playing several times over. Each woman delivers a short monologue, only one of which seems to make sense. Is this a mock suicide attempt? Or a real one? It’s hard to judge, like so much else that’s presented to us in this surreal play, which is both entertaining and truthful while yet proceeding in an utterly bewildering fashion.
The three women are very different. Francine (Jacqueline Wright) is a woman of our times, a tough-as-nails attorney at the top of her game who has nonetheless just lost a very important case involving gender discrimination. Lillian (Lea Floden), emanating a much softer, more vulnerable persona, is from the 19thcentury and entrapped in a loveless marriage while a relationship with the person she loves, Emily, remains impossible. Persephone (Randel) is the goddess herself, in person; she is spending her annual six months here on earth and pretty sure she doesn’t want to go back to life in Hades, with her controlling Neanderthal-minded husband/uncle, Pluto. While Francine and Lillian are relatively articulate about their problems, Persephone, when we meet her, is a mess, sobbing uncontrollably for what at this early point in the story is her undisclosed plight.
The subsequent scene is straight out of the Theater of the Absurd, and takes place in a café where an officious domineering waiter (a hilariously spot-on Jeffrey Johnson, playing all the male characters) manipulates the seating, snatches away newspapers and flowers, and ignores female customers’ orders, serving cake when bread has been asked for and tea when the request is for hot chocolate. He gets his comeuppance, however, when the Furies (Anna Giannotis, Denise Scheerer and Denise Leitner) who have been nesting along the walls, converge on him, strip off his garments and re-garb him in a shorts-less, pants-less getup, transforming him and his hitherto bossy maleness into a ludicrous target for ridicule.
Both the Furies and Johnson in various guises reappear throughout, the former as a not entirely lucid chorus — providing a modicum of succor as the women’s various predicaments are enacted — and Johnson (always pitch-perfect) as whatever oaf the scenario calls for. These include Francine’s husband and smug colleague, Carl; Lillian’s Victorian spouse Franklin (who makes Ibsen’s Torvald seem enlightened); and Persephone’s husband Pluto, who clomps around in a mid-thigh tunic, brandishing his big staff and issuing orders in a booming voice that barely masks the infantile angst inside.
Something of a hodgepodge (as if the playwright purposefully aimed to touch on a variety of concerns for women), the narrative embraces scenes in breast cancer clinics and the administration of mammograms to all three pivotal characters, including (somewhat confusingly) Persephone, who is destined to remain immortal as long as she returns to Pluto. This confusion (mine, anyway) is compounded by the mantra she repeats to herself at various times from the beginning of the play, “No surgery. No chemo. No cutting. No poison.” as if, in fact, she’d already been given a distressing diagnosis.
But whatever puzzlements are generated by the plot, the overarching theme — women’s complicity in their own oppression, their inability to walk away from toxic situations even when they know they are toxic — lands with bracing impact and not a little humor. Before the play begins, it’s there already, embedded in the telling one-word title, Sorry — which is the fallback response for the “nice” woman or girl who’s been told she’s in the wrong but is afraid to mount a challenge. (As the narrative moves forward, and the characters gain self-awareness, the word becomes — hearteningly —more difficult for them to pronounce.)
On the small proscenium, scenic designer Justin Huen keeps the set simple, with light-colored walls and a floor that look faintly marbleized to suggest the ancient Greek motifs embedded in the story. Knee-high light fixtures like oversized lanterns (lighting design by Brandon Baruch) glower red in select scenes, with amber shadows sometimes streaking the darkness.
Sound by Joseph “Sloe” Slawinski is striking and omnipresent, almost a character itself — at times rising to a cacophonous pitch, as when it aids in the depiction of the sharp-tongued Francine’s inner fury, or elsewhere promoting a chortle, as in the mammogram scene, where it underscores with droll wit (insofar as a sound effect can be witty) the unpleasant experience of a humungous machine pressing against a tender breast.
As the prickly take-no-prisoners Francine, the dynamic Wright delivers every ounce the same high caliber performance that she’s gifted LA theatergoers with for decades. Floden serves up a soft and lovely contrast as a conventional woman from Victorian times, subject to her husband’s rule. As Persephone, Randel gradually comes into her own as the play (which needs pruning) builds to its climax. Johnson, with his array of macho buffoons, serves up a steady stream of laughs in an interesting piece whose theme isn’t funny at all.
Moving Arts Theatre, 3191 Casitas Ave., Atwater. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 4 pm; No performances Sat. June 28 & Fri. July 4; thru July 19. https://movingarts.ludus.com/index.php Runnig time: approximately two hours and 15 minutes with an intermission.
Moving Arts Theatre
Through July 19
RECOMMENDED
Sorry, written by Melissa R. Randel and co-directed by Randel and Larry Biederman, opens on a bizarre, rather unsettling image: three women, not young, dressed in varying undergarments (costumes by Rosalida Medina), stand on their respective chairs, their necks encircled by a yellow ribbon whose other end suspends from the ceiling. A song signifying wistful regret, reminiscent of a French ballad, filters through the background, playing several times over. Each woman delivers a short monologue, only one of which seems to make sense. Is this a mock suicide attempt? Or a real one? It’s hard to judge, like so much else that’s presented to us in this surreal play, which is both entertaining and truthful while yet proceeding in an utterly bewildering fashion.
The three women are very different. Francine (Jacqueline Wright) is a woman of our times, a tough-as-nails attorney at the top of her game who has nonetheless just lost a very important case involving gender discrimination. Lillian (Lea Floden), emanating a much softer, more vulnerable persona, is from the 19thcentury and entrapped in a loveless marriage while a relationship with the person she loves, Emily, remains impossible. Persephone (Randel) is the goddess herself, in person; she is spending her annual six months here on earth and pretty sure she doesn’t want to go back to life in Hades, with her controlling Neanderthal-minded husband/uncle, Pluto. While Francine and Lillian are relatively articulate about their problems, Persephone, when we meet her, is a mess, sobbing uncontrollably for what at this early point in the story is her undisclosed plight.
The subsequent scene is straight out of the Theater of the Absurd, and takes place in a café where an officious domineering waiter (a hilariously spot-on Jeffrey Johnson, playing all the male characters) manipulates the seating, snatches away newspapers and flowers, and ignores female customers’ orders, serving cake when bread has been asked for and tea when the request is for hot chocolate. He gets his comeuppance, however, when the Furies (Anna Giannotis, Denise Scheerer and Denise Leitner) who have been nesting along the walls, converge on him, strip off his garments and re-garb him in a shorts-less, pants-less getup, transforming him and his hitherto bossy maleness into a ludicrous target for ridicule.
Both the Furies and Johnson in various guises reappear throughout, the former as a not entirely lucid chorus — providing a modicum of succor as the women’s various predicaments are enacted — and Johnson (always pitch-perfect) as whatever oaf the scenario calls for. These include Francine’s husband and smug colleague, Carl; Lillian’s Victorian spouse Franklin (who makes Ibsen’s Torvald seem enlightened); and Persephone’s husband Pluto, who clomps around in a mid-thigh tunic, brandishing his big staff and issuing orders in a booming voice that barely masks the infantile angst inside.
Something of a hodgepodge (as if the playwright purposefully aimed to touch on a variety of concerns for women), the narrative embraces scenes in breast cancer clinics and the administration of mammograms to all three pivotal characters, including (somewhat confusingly) Persephone, who is destined to remain immortal as long as she returns to Pluto. This confusion (mine, anyway) is compounded by the mantra she repeats to herself at various times from the beginning of the play, “No surgery. No chemo. No cutting. No poison.” as if, in fact, she’d already been given a distressing diagnosis.
But whatever puzzlements are generated by the plot, the overarching theme — women’s complicity in their own oppression, their inability to walk away from toxic situations even when they know they are toxic — lands with bracing impact and not a little humor. Before the play begins, it’s there already, embedded in the telling one-word title, Sorry — which is the fallback response for the “nice” woman or girl who’s been told she’s in the wrong but is afraid to mount a challenge. (As the narrative moves forward, and the characters gain self-awareness, the word becomes — hearteningly —more difficult for them to pronounce.)
On the small proscenium, scenic designer Justin Huen keeps the set simple, with light-colored walls and a floor that look faintly marbleized to suggest the ancient Greek motifs embedded in the story. Knee-high light fixtures like oversized lanterns (lighting design by Brandon Baruch) glower red in select scenes, with amber shadows sometimes streaking the darkness.
Sound by Joseph “Sloe” Slawinski is striking and omnipresent, almost a character itself — at times rising to a cacophonous pitch, as when it aids in the depiction of the sharp-tongued Francine’s inner fury, or elsewhere promoting a chortle, as in the mammogram scene, where it underscores with droll wit (insofar as a sound effect can be witty) the unpleasant experience of a humungous machine pressing against a tender breast.
As the prickly take-no-prisoners Francine, the dynamic Wright delivers every ounce the same high caliber performance that she’s gifted LA theatergoers with for decades. Floden serves up a soft and lovely contrast as a conventional woman from Victorian times, subject to her husband’s rule. As Persephone, Randel gradually comes into her own as the play (which needs pruning) builds to its climax. Johnson, with his array of macho buffoons, serves up a steady stream of laughs in an interesting piece whose theme isn’t funny at all.
Moving Arts Theatre, 3191 Casitas Ave., Atwater. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 4 pm; No performances Sat. June 28 & Fri. July 4; thru July 19. https://movingarts.ludus.com/index.php Runnig time: approximately two hours and 15 minutes with an intermission.
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Sorry. By Samantha Simmonds-Ronceros07/01/2025
[NoHo Arts District, CA] –
A NoHo Arts theatre review of Moving Arts & Leap in the Dark Productions’ Sorry., created by Melissa R. Randel and co-directed by Larry Biederman.
In many ways Sorry. is a very complicated, nuanced and layered exploration of the female life as an apology. However, after sitting through this two-and-a-half-hour stunning opus and reflecting on the themes, the stories and the characters within it, Sorry. crystallised into something impressively simple. Don’t comply. Live.
Three women, three stories. Lilian, a wife and mother from the 19th century who was married off at 15, kept continuously pregnant, and institutionalized for falling in love with a woman. Francine, a lawyer who looks the other way when her female colleague is harassed and then fired. And Persephone, the goddess, submissive wife of Hades and some might say the ultimate personification of complicity in her own fate.
Yet, none of these stories are at all straightforward. Just like all of us and our own histories, they are complex, full of self doubt and hidden agendas, some unknown even to us. The men in this play, and there are a few and all very cleverly played by one really brilliant actor, are childlike and brutal. Although they might believe they love passionately, furiously, their behaviour is usually just furious.
The story is told in repeated scenes, circular and profoundly familiar. The opening scene is shocking and unapologetic, the women standing on chairs with simulated nooses around their necks. Unable to vocalise their breaking. As hard as they try. As hard as they scream. It’s vivid and realistic. As much as most of this play is symbolic and metaphorical, the women and these incredible actresses’ performances are not. They are heartbreakingly real, and it’s the combination of the symbolism, the mystical realism and the achingly real women that might be our sisters, our mothers, our friends…us, that shatters our hearts the most. It’s all symbolism, isn’t it? The submissive mother. The caretaker wife. The relentless depiction of women as the willing servants, always available, always happy to be in second place. “The women behind every successful man.” Entwined into these compelling and truthful stories are the furies. Three witchy women clothed in rags. Dispersing truths and harsh reminders to these disparate souls. Protecting them with cold, hard reality. Not their consciences, but their ancestral souls. We have been tricked, bamboozled, conned into becoming so much less than we are. To make men first, we have had to step back. Not once but twice. To stand behind and hide our power.
Sorry. isn’t all men bashing, though. That’s actually part of the point. We have forgotten who we are willingly. To find our power, we have to own it, and that’s not always easy. Taking control. Forging our own way against a multitude of resistance and millennia of lies and oppression. Forgiving ourselves for being human…gosh, even that bloody word reeks of it. Hu-man. Man-kind. After seeing this play, I think I’m going to watch my language a little more closely. Words have meaning. It’s words that pressed us into submission in the first place. Words written in so called ancient religious texts, words written by old men, and then interpreted over and over again by more old men.
Sorry. is a beautiful, mystical visceral piece of theatre. It aims not merely to educate but to push us to remember. Remember who we are as women. Remember who to be loyal to. Remember, our past must not determine our future. Unless you go all the way back. To when women ruled the earth and all was well in the world. I’ll take that history, please!
Sorry runs through July 19th!! Highly recommended!!
Sorry. By Samantha Simmonds-Ronceros07/01/2025
[NoHo Arts District, CA] –
A NoHo Arts theatre review of Moving Arts & Leap in the Dark Productions’ Sorry., created by Melissa R. Randel and co-directed by Larry Biederman.
In many ways Sorry. is a very complicated, nuanced and layered exploration of the female life as an apology. However, after sitting through this two-and-a-half-hour stunning opus and reflecting on the themes, the stories and the characters within it, Sorry. crystallised into something impressively simple. Don’t comply. Live.
Three women, three stories. Lilian, a wife and mother from the 19th century who was married off at 15, kept continuously pregnant, and institutionalized for falling in love with a woman. Francine, a lawyer who looks the other way when her female colleague is harassed and then fired. And Persephone, the goddess, submissive wife of Hades and some might say the ultimate personification of complicity in her own fate.
Yet, none of these stories are at all straightforward. Just like all of us and our own histories, they are complex, full of self doubt and hidden agendas, some unknown even to us. The men in this play, and there are a few and all very cleverly played by one really brilliant actor, are childlike and brutal. Although they might believe they love passionately, furiously, their behaviour is usually just furious.
The story is told in repeated scenes, circular and profoundly familiar. The opening scene is shocking and unapologetic, the women standing on chairs with simulated nooses around their necks. Unable to vocalise their breaking. As hard as they try. As hard as they scream. It’s vivid and realistic. As much as most of this play is symbolic and metaphorical, the women and these incredible actresses’ performances are not. They are heartbreakingly real, and it’s the combination of the symbolism, the mystical realism and the achingly real women that might be our sisters, our mothers, our friends…us, that shatters our hearts the most. It’s all symbolism, isn’t it? The submissive mother. The caretaker wife. The relentless depiction of women as the willing servants, always available, always happy to be in second place. “The women behind every successful man.” Entwined into these compelling and truthful stories are the furies. Three witchy women clothed in rags. Dispersing truths and harsh reminders to these disparate souls. Protecting them with cold, hard reality. Not their consciences, but their ancestral souls. We have been tricked, bamboozled, conned into becoming so much less than we are. To make men first, we have had to step back. Not once but twice. To stand behind and hide our power.
Sorry. isn’t all men bashing, though. That’s actually part of the point. We have forgotten who we are willingly. To find our power, we have to own it, and that’s not always easy. Taking control. Forging our own way against a multitude of resistance and millennia of lies and oppression. Forgiving ourselves for being human…gosh, even that bloody word reeks of it. Hu-man. Man-kind. After seeing this play, I think I’m going to watch my language a little more closely. Words have meaning. It’s words that pressed us into submission in the first place. Words written in so called ancient religious texts, words written by old men, and then interpreted over and over again by more old men.
Sorry. is a beautiful, mystical visceral piece of theatre. It aims not merely to educate but to push us to remember. Remember who we are as women. Remember who to be loyal to. Remember, our past must not determine our future. Unless you go all the way back. To when women ruled the earth and all was well in the world. I’ll take that history, please!
Sorry runs through July 19th!! Highly recommended!!
SORRY. – Moving Arts Theatre Company at Atwater Village Theatre
Reviewed by Amalisha HuEck on June 23, 2025
Obedience is surprisingly exhausting, and challenges are inevitable in the darkness that comes with being a female in a world where man dominates. You become a field that is mercilessly harvested. Black and red colors are all around, with a yellow ribbon around the neck. We become a dream, an echo, a shadow of ourselves, while waiting to pretend … Pluto, the Lord of the underworld who is also an uncle, steals a 14-year-old girl and takes her into his world of death and darkness. Even though she feels like a victim, she doesn’t know how to change and escape from it. ‘Be mortal with me’ says he, on what she replies, ‘I don’t want to live forever in the dark.’ She becomes a decaying queen … a sexual exploitation who understands that she can only push God so much before she is turned into a constellation.
Sorry. challenges the many ways women defer, adapt, comply, and apologize in a man’s world.
“Have I run out of all of my sorrys?”
This very complex multi-layered play has a variety of genres. A collage of vignettes about women’s issues feminist themes juxtaposed with a plot about a woman who has killed a husband. The only male actor represents a shift changer and slips in and out of actual different characters representing men in general. The show is complex, so layered that even the elements like; music, costumes, certain actions were most likely hard to explain during the process of creating it. They are wonderful but challenging.
The perplexity of it makes you wonder, their next move. Some of the style of the vignettes have a feeling of early German expressionism. And yet there are three supporting actors, contrasting the three main actors, similar to that of a Greek chorus. Not only do they punctuate the themes and issues, but they also literally move set pieces and costumes around. The variety of issues using Greek mythology are brought up, and amongst it – women’s history in general. It also has many comedic elements with literal gallows humor which adds levity to the seriousness of the issues.
The interchange of futuristic visual elements and the Greek mythology intermingles so flawlessly, especially when the lighting strikes, and the vibrant music tops it all, it gives us an extraordinary ocular and hearing effect. Transitions are holding one’s attention by being infused with the choreography moves. The creative and colorful garments are extraordinarily gorgeous. So, pleasing to an eye. The subtle humor brings in balance. The show is a true experience!
Highly recommended.
The cast of seven is phenomenal; Lea Floden, Anna Giannotis, Jeffery Johnson, Denise Leiter, Melissa R. Randel, Denise Scheerer and Jacqueline Wright. Bravo!
The tapdancing scene is unforgettable; performed skillfully with passion. It produces an effective rhythm of the drums behind the horrifying statements. It is always so enlightening to see great tap dancing. Very grateful for that.
SORRY. is written by Melissa Randel, co-directed by Larry Biederman, and produced by Dana Schwartz. Set Designer is Justin Huen, lighting designer is Brandon Baruch, sound designer is Joseph “Sloe” Slawinski, and costume designer is Rosalida Medina. Stage Manager is Ashley Weaver, Graphics were done by Michelle Hanzelova and PR is covered by Sandra Kuker PR. What a team!
Reviewed by Amalisha HuEck on June 23, 2025
Obedience is surprisingly exhausting, and challenges are inevitable in the darkness that comes with being a female in a world where man dominates. You become a field that is mercilessly harvested. Black and red colors are all around, with a yellow ribbon around the neck. We become a dream, an echo, a shadow of ourselves, while waiting to pretend … Pluto, the Lord of the underworld who is also an uncle, steals a 14-year-old girl and takes her into his world of death and darkness. Even though she feels like a victim, she doesn’t know how to change and escape from it. ‘Be mortal with me’ says he, on what she replies, ‘I don’t want to live forever in the dark.’ She becomes a decaying queen … a sexual exploitation who understands that she can only push God so much before she is turned into a constellation.
Sorry. challenges the many ways women defer, adapt, comply, and apologize in a man’s world.
“Have I run out of all of my sorrys?”
This very complex multi-layered play has a variety of genres. A collage of vignettes about women’s issues feminist themes juxtaposed with a plot about a woman who has killed a husband. The only male actor represents a shift changer and slips in and out of actual different characters representing men in general. The show is complex, so layered that even the elements like; music, costumes, certain actions were most likely hard to explain during the process of creating it. They are wonderful but challenging.
The perplexity of it makes you wonder, their next move. Some of the style of the vignettes have a feeling of early German expressionism. And yet there are three supporting actors, contrasting the three main actors, similar to that of a Greek chorus. Not only do they punctuate the themes and issues, but they also literally move set pieces and costumes around. The variety of issues using Greek mythology are brought up, and amongst it – women’s history in general. It also has many comedic elements with literal gallows humor which adds levity to the seriousness of the issues.
The interchange of futuristic visual elements and the Greek mythology intermingles so flawlessly, especially when the lighting strikes, and the vibrant music tops it all, it gives us an extraordinary ocular and hearing effect. Transitions are holding one’s attention by being infused with the choreography moves. The creative and colorful garments are extraordinarily gorgeous. So, pleasing to an eye. The subtle humor brings in balance. The show is a true experience!
Highly recommended.
The cast of seven is phenomenal; Lea Floden, Anna Giannotis, Jeffery Johnson, Denise Leiter, Melissa R. Randel, Denise Scheerer and Jacqueline Wright. Bravo!
The tapdancing scene is unforgettable; performed skillfully with passion. It produces an effective rhythm of the drums behind the horrifying statements. It is always so enlightening to see great tap dancing. Very grateful for that.
SORRY. is written by Melissa Randel, co-directed by Larry Biederman, and produced by Dana Schwartz. Set Designer is Justin Huen, lighting designer is Brandon Baruch, sound designer is Joseph “Sloe” Slawinski, and costume designer is Rosalida Medina. Stage Manager is Ashley Weaver, Graphics were done by Michelle Hanzelova and PR is covered by Sandra Kuker PR. What a team!
INTERVIEW with JAMES SCARBOROUGH
Melissa R. Randel's "Sorry." works as theatrical archaeology. It unearths the buried impulses behind every reflexive female apology. Through three women separated by millennia (Ancient Greek Persephone, 19th-century Lillian, and contemporary lawyer Francine), Randel maps how female acquiescence has persisted across history. Each character reaches a breaking point where "sorry" becomes impossible to say. Their silence proves more dangerous than their voices ever were.
The structural audacity lies in Randel's refusal to soften these women's responses to systemic oppression. Francine doesn't just leave her harassing husband, she murders him. Lillian doesn't merely practice herbalism; she performs abortions before facing institutionalization for loving women. Persephone battles both cancer and domestic violence. Her mythic status offers no immunity from mortal suffering. The three Furies function as internal mirrors. They reflect each woman's buried power back to her.
What could have become didactic feminism instead offers a surgical examination of complicity. Randel understands that women help diminish themselves through conditioning so thorough it feels natural. The play's title punctuation - a period, not a question mark - signals finality rather than inquiry. These women have moved beyond wondering why they apologize to simply stopping.
The June 20th world premiere at Moving Arts Theater will test whether we can handle women who choose violence over victimhood, rage over resignation. Randel's vision suggests that sometimes the most radical act isn't speaking truth to power but refusing to speak at all.
Below follows an email conversation with Melissa R. Randel.
JS: Your play traces female apologetics across three historical periods. What convinced you that this particular through-line (the compulsive "sorry”) was the thread that could bind these disparate women together?
MRR: The characters in Sorry. came to me separately. Persephone was first. I wrote a short play about Persephone and Pluto, which later became their final scene in Sorry.. Inspired by family lore of an event involving domestic violence I didn't witness but heard re-told over and over, I infused the sense of danger and violence I felt when I heard this story, into Persephone and Pluto's life in the Underworld. The 1950's setting: a rural, spare home, with chained up dogs, seemed fitting.
Mythology is replete with stories about female goddesses exacting retribution against gods for infidelity. What fascinates me is that even goddesses had to operate indirectly, by being craftier and more creative than their male counterparts. Lies of omission, taking indirect action, and explanation, are cousins in the code of the female apology.
While I was working on Asylum, a collaborative, avant garde theater piece about the imprisonment of women in mental institutions for symptoms including, "hysteria," "nymphomania," and what we now recognize as postpartum depression, the character of 19th century Lillian emerged. In Sorry., Lillian breaks out of a lifetime of compliance and subjugation, pursues her passions, and is institutionalized by her husband, for loving women. I imagined Lillian speaking outrageous truths, saying things that present-day women in long-term, unsatisfying marriages might censor, begging the question: Is Lillian a woman ahead of her time, wiser, bolder than her contemporaries? Or has she come undone by the battery of treatments and assaults she has endured? She admits to outrageous acts, without remorse. Lillian's monologues never made it into Asylum, but found a home in Sorry..
Francine evolved from decades of observation of power struggles between men and women in the workforce. While living in NYC, I worked for two high-end fashion public relations firms helmed by women whose behavior was straight out of, "Devil Wears Prada." My co-workers would quake when the president of the company entered the room, because of her tyrannical style of leadership. Later, in the early 2000's when I landed in academia, I was struck by the disparate levels of accountability between male and female faculty members. Rigorous rules and "hoops to jump through" for women, and swaths of freedom for men. None of this corresponded to who was in a position of leadership. Women were routinely encouraged to "get along" and "not make waves." The PR firm and academia experiences were two sides of the same coin. Instead of making Francine a victim of inequity, I made her part of the problem. I wanted her to examine her complicity in the undoing of female colleagues. Women participating in the oppression of other women is a very important piece of the puzzle women are currently trying to solve for themselves and each other.
JS: Francine murders her husband rather than continue tolerating his harassment of her colleague. How do you navigate the line between justified rage and potentially alienating audiences with such stark moral choices?
MRR:
Francine's revelation of her passive participation in another woman's harassment is her wake up call to the fact that her moral compass is broken. The extreme action of shooting her husband is the action of a self she doesn't recognize. It is unplanned, "My juiciest bit of improvisation to date." She warns Carl, "You should be afraid. You have no idea what I'm capable of. I have no idea what I'm capable of." Carl's infidelity is not Francine's breaking point, it is Francine's own transgression, failing to come to the aid of a female colleague, that undoes her.
Because of the meta aspect of Sorry. and Francine's direct, conversational relationship with the Audience, the brutality of her actions is theoretical. As Francine reminds the Audience: "It's a play. That was a sound effect. Carl's not really dead." Unlike the rampant, graphic violence we as Audience ingest passively, daily, from popular shows like Game of Thrones or Criminal Minds, the violence in Sorry., as in Ancient Greece, occurs offstage. However, the agony of the women in Sorry., and the cumulative impact of a lifetime of subordination, subjugation, degradation, and violence, occurs onstage, witnessed by the Audience.
JS: The three Furies serve as both chorus and conscience for your protagonists. Given your background with SITI Company's physical theatre techniques, how do you envision their presence manifesting on Justin Huen's set?
MRR: It was difficult to land on a final set design because Justin had so many gorgeous ideas. I don't want to spoil any surprises, so let it suffice to say, he has designed a fantastic playground for The Furies. Able to be both seen and unseen, they can become part of the architecture, or spring into action, as needed by the women of Sorry.. The walls framing the stage offer multiple landing places for the ever-present Furies. Each wall subtly reflects elements from their world: Greek architecture for Persephone, wallpaper for Lillian (a nod to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's feminist essay, "Yellow Wallpaper") and sleek contemporary panels for Francine.
Larry Biederman and I share a vocabulary rooted in Anne Bogart's SITI Company aesthetic. Set design is first and foremost about, "How can we use this space, empty space, wall, recess? Justin has provided many surfaces to "wake up." The set is never simply decorative, it's part of storytelling, and at times, almost another character onstage.
JS: You've written that "women being silenced is a recurring theme" in your work, yet "Sorry." is ultimately about women choosing silence, the refusal to apologize. How does this play represent an evolution in your thinking about female voice versus female agency?
MRR: Choosing to stop saying "I'm sorry" unless the words are sincere, and not code for what we'd really like to say, is an opening to say something else, something new, something unexpected. Almost everyone who has interacted with Sorry. reflects how acutely aware they became afterward, of apologizing. There are so many little words and phrases women use to "soften" what they are saying so that it's non-threatening. "Sorry" is "just" one of many, but it's a big one - maybe the gateway for a lot of change to come? The women's movement preceding us did the heavy lifting in terms of equal rights and establishing new protocols around harassment, in particular prosecutable sexual harassment. But where we need to dig in is the minutiae of our everyday lives, in the daily round of our homes, our jobs, and in our relationships with each other.
JS: Co-director Larry Biederman brings extensive experience with challenging new works, from Eric Overmyer's dark comedy to Sheila Callaghan's experimental pieces. What aspects of this collaboration have pushed "Sorry." beyond what you initially envisioned?
MRR: Larry brings many, many gifts to Sorry.. The original script was more fragmented, and would have asked a lot more of the Audience. There were multiple, separate, but thematically connected storylines, along with highly stylized and choreographed movement passages. Larry helped Sorry. find its momentum from scene to scene and as a whole by re-arranging scenes and interjecting existing long monologues into each other, creating more of a conversation. Together we looked for places to insert movement into scenes and monologues, where it would add to the impact of the words.
Because of our shared aesthetic and love for physical theater, Larry appreciated how movement was being used to replace language in Sorry. and embraced what was already in place, before changing anything. We initially agreed I would handle choreography involving dance while he staged moments with movement opportunities that didn't necessarily require "steps." We started out with a list of what each of us would handle in terms of staging, but wound up collaborating much of the time.
I've also leaned on Larry for dramaturgy feedback. His observations were invaluable in rewrites. Having roots in the nonverbal world of dance, my comfort level for symbolism, abstraction, and chaos onstage is high. I think Larry helped me keep some of that in check, so that the story would be clear during moments when the Audience needs to understand what's happening.
JS: The July 6th performance offers free admission to breast cancer survivors and caregivers, connecting directly to Persephone's storyline. How do you balance the play's mythic elements with its very real engagement with contemporary health crises?
MRR: Breast cancer became part of Persephone's story line when a close family member was diagnosed with breast cancer. I spent a lot of time with her and tried to allow her say anything she needed to say, no matter how outrageous. Because of my background as a dancer, and all of the years of studying the lines of the body in the mirror, and my affinity for the innate beauty of the female form, the thought of altering/removing part of a woman's body to save her life, hurt me deeply.
I had been working on Persephone's story at the time, and the complexity of giving breast cancer to a mythological character, a goddess, known for her beauty, intrigued me. Her complex dynamic with Pluto felt rich and dangerous and offered so much space for Persephone's idea of her value beyond beauty to evolve over the course of the play.
Little did I know, in three years it would be my turn to become a "member of the club no one wants to belong to." Despite having had practice, it was shocking news. In the breast cancer world, everyone is busy trying to save your life. No one prepares you for the aftermath - your new body, the after effects of treatment, the ongoing damage that life-saving drugs continue to wreak upon the body. I went through three plastic surgeons before I found one who attempted to understand that what was happening to me was not an "opportunity." Plastic surgeon's obsession with trying to "improve" my body led me to Pluto's stance on Persephone's breast cancer: that it would be better for her to remain in Hades forever and be beautiful, than to continue to return to Earth where she is happy and could possibly receive treatment. Routinely bypassing my desire to look as normal and unchanged as possible, the plastic surgeon's motives felt self-serving - as though they would feel better if they could build me perfect, large breasts. Their idea of beauty, like Pluto's, was limited by their own desires.
One of my favorite people on the planet is my physical therapist. I started PT about 3 months after surgery and the first thing she did was so kind, so compassionate, so unimaginable: she sat me in front of a mirror and asked me to look at myself. It was the beginning of healing on the inside.
Performances are Friday and Saturday 8pm and Sunday 4pm from June 20th through July 19th. The Moving Arts Theatre is located at 3191 Casitas Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90039. For more information, click here.
The structural audacity lies in Randel's refusal to soften these women's responses to systemic oppression. Francine doesn't just leave her harassing husband, she murders him. Lillian doesn't merely practice herbalism; she performs abortions before facing institutionalization for loving women. Persephone battles both cancer and domestic violence. Her mythic status offers no immunity from mortal suffering. The three Furies function as internal mirrors. They reflect each woman's buried power back to her.
What could have become didactic feminism instead offers a surgical examination of complicity. Randel understands that women help diminish themselves through conditioning so thorough it feels natural. The play's title punctuation - a period, not a question mark - signals finality rather than inquiry. These women have moved beyond wondering why they apologize to simply stopping.
The June 20th world premiere at Moving Arts Theater will test whether we can handle women who choose violence over victimhood, rage over resignation. Randel's vision suggests that sometimes the most radical act isn't speaking truth to power but refusing to speak at all.
Below follows an email conversation with Melissa R. Randel.
JS: Your play traces female apologetics across three historical periods. What convinced you that this particular through-line (the compulsive "sorry”) was the thread that could bind these disparate women together?
MRR: The characters in Sorry. came to me separately. Persephone was first. I wrote a short play about Persephone and Pluto, which later became their final scene in Sorry.. Inspired by family lore of an event involving domestic violence I didn't witness but heard re-told over and over, I infused the sense of danger and violence I felt when I heard this story, into Persephone and Pluto's life in the Underworld. The 1950's setting: a rural, spare home, with chained up dogs, seemed fitting.
Mythology is replete with stories about female goddesses exacting retribution against gods for infidelity. What fascinates me is that even goddesses had to operate indirectly, by being craftier and more creative than their male counterparts. Lies of omission, taking indirect action, and explanation, are cousins in the code of the female apology.
While I was working on Asylum, a collaborative, avant garde theater piece about the imprisonment of women in mental institutions for symptoms including, "hysteria," "nymphomania," and what we now recognize as postpartum depression, the character of 19th century Lillian emerged. In Sorry., Lillian breaks out of a lifetime of compliance and subjugation, pursues her passions, and is institutionalized by her husband, for loving women. I imagined Lillian speaking outrageous truths, saying things that present-day women in long-term, unsatisfying marriages might censor, begging the question: Is Lillian a woman ahead of her time, wiser, bolder than her contemporaries? Or has she come undone by the battery of treatments and assaults she has endured? She admits to outrageous acts, without remorse. Lillian's monologues never made it into Asylum, but found a home in Sorry..
Francine evolved from decades of observation of power struggles between men and women in the workforce. While living in NYC, I worked for two high-end fashion public relations firms helmed by women whose behavior was straight out of, "Devil Wears Prada." My co-workers would quake when the president of the company entered the room, because of her tyrannical style of leadership. Later, in the early 2000's when I landed in academia, I was struck by the disparate levels of accountability between male and female faculty members. Rigorous rules and "hoops to jump through" for women, and swaths of freedom for men. None of this corresponded to who was in a position of leadership. Women were routinely encouraged to "get along" and "not make waves." The PR firm and academia experiences were two sides of the same coin. Instead of making Francine a victim of inequity, I made her part of the problem. I wanted her to examine her complicity in the undoing of female colleagues. Women participating in the oppression of other women is a very important piece of the puzzle women are currently trying to solve for themselves and each other.
JS: Francine murders her husband rather than continue tolerating his harassment of her colleague. How do you navigate the line between justified rage and potentially alienating audiences with such stark moral choices?
MRR:
Francine's revelation of her passive participation in another woman's harassment is her wake up call to the fact that her moral compass is broken. The extreme action of shooting her husband is the action of a self she doesn't recognize. It is unplanned, "My juiciest bit of improvisation to date." She warns Carl, "You should be afraid. You have no idea what I'm capable of. I have no idea what I'm capable of." Carl's infidelity is not Francine's breaking point, it is Francine's own transgression, failing to come to the aid of a female colleague, that undoes her.
Because of the meta aspect of Sorry. and Francine's direct, conversational relationship with the Audience, the brutality of her actions is theoretical. As Francine reminds the Audience: "It's a play. That was a sound effect. Carl's not really dead." Unlike the rampant, graphic violence we as Audience ingest passively, daily, from popular shows like Game of Thrones or Criminal Minds, the violence in Sorry., as in Ancient Greece, occurs offstage. However, the agony of the women in Sorry., and the cumulative impact of a lifetime of subordination, subjugation, degradation, and violence, occurs onstage, witnessed by the Audience.
JS: The three Furies serve as both chorus and conscience for your protagonists. Given your background with SITI Company's physical theatre techniques, how do you envision their presence manifesting on Justin Huen's set?
MRR: It was difficult to land on a final set design because Justin had so many gorgeous ideas. I don't want to spoil any surprises, so let it suffice to say, he has designed a fantastic playground for The Furies. Able to be both seen and unseen, they can become part of the architecture, or spring into action, as needed by the women of Sorry.. The walls framing the stage offer multiple landing places for the ever-present Furies. Each wall subtly reflects elements from their world: Greek architecture for Persephone, wallpaper for Lillian (a nod to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's feminist essay, "Yellow Wallpaper") and sleek contemporary panels for Francine.
Larry Biederman and I share a vocabulary rooted in Anne Bogart's SITI Company aesthetic. Set design is first and foremost about, "How can we use this space, empty space, wall, recess? Justin has provided many surfaces to "wake up." The set is never simply decorative, it's part of storytelling, and at times, almost another character onstage.
JS: You've written that "women being silenced is a recurring theme" in your work, yet "Sorry." is ultimately about women choosing silence, the refusal to apologize. How does this play represent an evolution in your thinking about female voice versus female agency?
MRR: Choosing to stop saying "I'm sorry" unless the words are sincere, and not code for what we'd really like to say, is an opening to say something else, something new, something unexpected. Almost everyone who has interacted with Sorry. reflects how acutely aware they became afterward, of apologizing. There are so many little words and phrases women use to "soften" what they are saying so that it's non-threatening. "Sorry" is "just" one of many, but it's a big one - maybe the gateway for a lot of change to come? The women's movement preceding us did the heavy lifting in terms of equal rights and establishing new protocols around harassment, in particular prosecutable sexual harassment. But where we need to dig in is the minutiae of our everyday lives, in the daily round of our homes, our jobs, and in our relationships with each other.
JS: Co-director Larry Biederman brings extensive experience with challenging new works, from Eric Overmyer's dark comedy to Sheila Callaghan's experimental pieces. What aspects of this collaboration have pushed "Sorry." beyond what you initially envisioned?
MRR: Larry brings many, many gifts to Sorry.. The original script was more fragmented, and would have asked a lot more of the Audience. There were multiple, separate, but thematically connected storylines, along with highly stylized and choreographed movement passages. Larry helped Sorry. find its momentum from scene to scene and as a whole by re-arranging scenes and interjecting existing long monologues into each other, creating more of a conversation. Together we looked for places to insert movement into scenes and monologues, where it would add to the impact of the words.
Because of our shared aesthetic and love for physical theater, Larry appreciated how movement was being used to replace language in Sorry. and embraced what was already in place, before changing anything. We initially agreed I would handle choreography involving dance while he staged moments with movement opportunities that didn't necessarily require "steps." We started out with a list of what each of us would handle in terms of staging, but wound up collaborating much of the time.
I've also leaned on Larry for dramaturgy feedback. His observations were invaluable in rewrites. Having roots in the nonverbal world of dance, my comfort level for symbolism, abstraction, and chaos onstage is high. I think Larry helped me keep some of that in check, so that the story would be clear during moments when the Audience needs to understand what's happening.
JS: The July 6th performance offers free admission to breast cancer survivors and caregivers, connecting directly to Persephone's storyline. How do you balance the play's mythic elements with its very real engagement with contemporary health crises?
MRR: Breast cancer became part of Persephone's story line when a close family member was diagnosed with breast cancer. I spent a lot of time with her and tried to allow her say anything she needed to say, no matter how outrageous. Because of my background as a dancer, and all of the years of studying the lines of the body in the mirror, and my affinity for the innate beauty of the female form, the thought of altering/removing part of a woman's body to save her life, hurt me deeply.
I had been working on Persephone's story at the time, and the complexity of giving breast cancer to a mythological character, a goddess, known for her beauty, intrigued me. Her complex dynamic with Pluto felt rich and dangerous and offered so much space for Persephone's idea of her value beyond beauty to evolve over the course of the play.
Little did I know, in three years it would be my turn to become a "member of the club no one wants to belong to." Despite having had practice, it was shocking news. In the breast cancer world, everyone is busy trying to save your life. No one prepares you for the aftermath - your new body, the after effects of treatment, the ongoing damage that life-saving drugs continue to wreak upon the body. I went through three plastic surgeons before I found one who attempted to understand that what was happening to me was not an "opportunity." Plastic surgeon's obsession with trying to "improve" my body led me to Pluto's stance on Persephone's breast cancer: that it would be better for her to remain in Hades forever and be beautiful, than to continue to return to Earth where she is happy and could possibly receive treatment. Routinely bypassing my desire to look as normal and unchanged as possible, the plastic surgeon's motives felt self-serving - as though they would feel better if they could build me perfect, large breasts. Their idea of beauty, like Pluto's, was limited by their own desires.
One of my favorite people on the planet is my physical therapist. I started PT about 3 months after surgery and the first thing she did was so kind, so compassionate, so unimaginable: she sat me in front of a mirror and asked me to look at myself. It was the beginning of healing on the inside.
Performances are Friday and Saturday 8pm and Sunday 4pm from June 20th through July 19th. The Moving Arts Theatre is located at 3191 Casitas Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90039. For more information, click here.