When Gina Stevenson began writing “Breakfalls” in 2021, she had just started taking karate classes.
“I thought that the martial arts space known as a karate dojo is a very attractive theatrical space where people who would never meet in everyday life can interact.
“We all come together on the mat to learn not only how to hurt each other, but also how to keep each other safe,” she said. “I was discovering the most amazing connections and physical relationships with strangers that don't happen in other areas of outdoor life. So it just felt like the setting for a play. ”
Vermont Stage Company will present the world premiere of Stevensen's dramatic comedy Breakfalls from March 20 to April 7 at the Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center in Burlington.
Stevensen's story is set in a struggling karate dojo. There, five adults meet weekly to punch, kick, and navigate their way through a complicated world. The person in charge is the stoic and powerful Martha, who struggles to keep the dojo and her students afloat. Romance blooms between Summer, a prickly but sensitive brown belt, and Charlie, a shy new student looking for strength. Ideologies collide with the arrival of clumsy Joe, who draws Sean (a potentially violent man) into an eternal contest of masculinity.
As each character faces their hopes and fears on the mat, Breakfalls asks, “How can we stay safe in an unsafe world?”
“It's very personal,” Stevensen said. “It came about because of moving to Vermont, because of the pandemic, and because I started karate. It was born out of a desire to become a part of a new community that was divided by people.”
Many of the characters came from Stevensen's own life.
“The whole process, especially this particular piece as a world premiere, is really special because there's one character who started out pretty much the same way I did,” she said without giving her name.
“There's another character, Quinn (post-role), who's an actor, and we used to be romantic partners. And the character he plays, Sean, is a character he's playing from something he's been struggling with in his own life. It was born, and I just kind of forced it into one particular thing,' character degree,'' Stevensen said.
Chrissy Rhodes, who plays Summer, is the person who first introduced Stevensen to martial arts.
“So by talking to them (preferred pronoun) about their martial arts experience, their black belts, and being serious practitioners, that helped build Summer's character a little bit, and Martha's character a little bit,” Stevensen said. said.
She also conducted interviews with the director of the Marshall Way Dojo in Colchester and others there.
“Through those interviews and conversations with them, I formed Martha,” Stevensen said. “Joe got what he got from observing people in the dojo.”
This character is a mixture of masculinity and bravado, with a desire for community, to be heard, to feel valued and served.
“So they all came from pretty personal places,” Stevensen said.
Stevensen began writing plays while staying in a Chicago suburb.
“At first I was really looking at each character,” she said. “Where do they start and where do I want their individual arcs to go? But I kept wondering about the ending, because that was the hardest thing to figure out. “How do we end this?”
Each character's arc involved facing their fears and taking steps, however small, to find their own sense of self-love, growth, and healing.
“While we were there, as we were trying to think of what could potentially end this play, an incident occurred in a town right next to ours,” Stevensen said. “That was the inspiration for the end.”
Six months ago, Vermont Stage's playwrights, cast, and crew began workshopping the play and refining the script through a rigorous collaborative process.
“We did a very early casting and the actors really helped me discover the characters and reflect them on me, thanks to the great work of Delante[Keyes]who is the director,” Stephen said. Sen said. “We had to go back and rewrite based on that. It's like a sculpture. There are all sorts of things that need to be removed to find a beautiful sculpture. It was really a collective effort.”
“What was important to me was actually getting the cast and going through this process together and building a company in a sense,” Keyes said.
“The great thing about this play is that there are so many challenges,” he says. “It's complicated. There are so many fights going on. There are so many gear shifts, like dialing up and dialing down, where we have moments of vulnerability and defensiveness with each other within seconds, and this… The play reflects that so beautifully.”
“When I write a play, I personally always feel that if you can make someone laugh, it touches their heart,” Stevensen said. “For me, there's a lot of comedy in the fumbling. How do you build a physical relationship with a stranger? It's very personal, it's very intimate, and there's a lot of comedy in that negotiation.” And in the end, there is hope and possibility.”
