By Walter Tunis
Contributing Writer
 

The Public Library – an institutional fixture in metropolitan cities and small towns alike. A place for study, for solace and, providing any stereotypical shusher librarians are still in their employment, for quiet.

In Louisville native Vince Gatton’s Alexandria, which opens a two-weekend run at Antagonist Productions on September 25, it becomes something a bit more booming. The Southern rural library that serves as the play’s lone setting becomes a refuge, a ground zero for cultures that complement and collide and, ultimately, a kind of haven as the world outside summons a storm even more volatile than the one already unfolding inside.

“With Alexandria, the title was almost the first thing I came up with,” Gatton said by phone from his New York home. “I knew I was going to write a play set in a smalltown library and I was going to call the play Alexandria. You don’t need to know too much when you put the words ‘library’ and ‘Alexandria’ together. That should be a warning that things are probably not going to end well.”

Alexandria gathers five characters of remarkable diversity. There is Brenda (played by Marianne Miller), the chief librarian who is awaiting her marriage to headstrong partner Pam (Katherine Osborne). Despite being openly gay, Brenda maintains a strong friendship with religious, open hearted co-worker Ray (Forrest Loeffler), The library also hosts an outwardly cranky regular named Ol’ Moe (Spencer McGuire). Into this mix comes a resilient, intuitive gay runaway, Monté (Blake Bowman).

The isolation surrounding them, the connections they make and the fractures that inevitably appear sit at the heart of Alexandria. Then the rest of the world has its say.

“The play is just super, super whip-smart,” said director Bo List. “I encountered it maybe four or five years ago for the first time and thought, ‘This is how quaint science fiction feels.’ And it does not feel quaint or science fiction at all right now.

“What appeals to me most about it is there are a handful of very strong perspectives. I find that the play is very fair to all of them. It’s critical of some viewpoints that I think it would be very easy for the playwright to sympathize with, but also very sympathetic to what I presume the playwright might find opposite his own views. It presents fairness in these divided times when we need bridges everywhere. But everywhere you look, bridges are burning. This is an attempt at an honest reckoning of sorts. We need more of that. We need more compassion. This play puts a lot of intelligence and compassion and forward thinking and terror in a pot of really smart writing.”

“In the end, there are two truths fighting with each other in this play,” Gatton said. “One is that people are more than their ideological or religious or political convictions. There are other things that connect and bind us to each other. But also, there is a different truth: the personal is political in that your ideological convictions are a statement of your values. And those two truths can rub up against each other in very uncomfortable ways. Alexandria puts those truths next to each other to see what sparks.”

Comfort and sparks mark the friendship between Brenda and Ray, perhaps expectedly so. But what eventually transpires between a proudly gay female and her easy going, but perhaps culturally parochial co-worker is anything but predictable.

“Brenda has found that in the community she grew up in, not everyone has been accepting of the fact she is a lesbian,” said Miller. “As she is navigating the moments before her wedding, the whole world turns upside down. We follow her journey through cooperating with the community and accepting the community to having some hard realizations.”

“Ray wants to love everybody and that means he tries to understand different points of view and perspectives while also not compromising himself in what he believes is right,” said Loeffler.

“All throughout the play, he works hard to strike that balance. I think as the play goes on, that gets harder to do. There are fractures that occur before you get the fallout from the pressure of trying to be the bridge that holds all these different things together. When that pressure is gone, Ray kind of gets to be himself.”

So what occurs in the outside world that sends Alexandria into irreversible turmoil? Those specifics will be revealed when you see the production. Suffice to say, they are frighteningly topical.

“There is an element of horror because what you see can actually happen,” said McGuire. “A good friend of mine told me the best horror to him was not just a good old slasher film, but a story about things that could actually happen. And this, to some level, has happened. And it could be catastrophic.”

“The dumpster fire of the social world we’re living in right now and the pandemic have rewired us,” said List. “One of the ways I’ve been rewired has been to seek stimulation that is comforting and affirming. The TV I watch is largely stupid and pleasant. I never thought I needed escapist entertainment, but I have fallen into seeking out escape. A chance to work on a play that doesn’t comfort, but somehow manages to challenge in a comforting way, like providing characters that we care about, even the ones that we disagree with, has been exciting. I’m enjoying getting back into wanting to produce a story that will stir people up in a good way and put them out their comfort zone, but not all the way into their discomfort zone.”

“What can I say? I’m a bit of a catastrophist,” added Gatton.

“The great Louisville playwright Marsha Norman once said, ‘One of the things you’ve got to do as a writer is love your characters and then put them up on a tree branch and throw rocks at them. And if they are too comfortable up there, you got to find bigger rocks because as much as you love them, you have to make things very hard for them.’

“Boy, was that in the back of my head when Alexandria became fully formed. I’m throwing a really huge rock.”

Alexandria runs Oct. 1–4 at Antagonist Productions, 2520 Regency Rd., Suite 140 in Lexington. Performances are 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $26 at https://antagonist.productions/.