Metro Pulse/Backstage/The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek

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What:
Trestle at Pope Lick Creek

When:
Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m., through May 17.

Where:
Black Box Theatre, 5213 Homberg Drive. Produced by the Actor's Co-op.

Cost:
$8/$12. Call 909-9300 for info.

All three form an intoxicating cocktail in Naomi Wallace's play

by Paige M. Travis

The narrative style of Naomi Wallace's The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek is a departure from most plays produced by the Actors Co-op and most plays in Knoxville. It takes places in short vignettes, flashing backwards and forwards in time. It's part murder mystery, part coming-of-age story, part social commentary of the Depression era. As presented by several talented actors, it's also beautifully poetic and deeply moving.

When Kentucky native Wallace received the prestigious MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant in 1999, the organization described her as a playwright who "employs poetic and highly original language and a strong socio-political sensibility in her works... Her plays deal with subject matter grounded in human reality not typically seen in modern theater. Wallace brings her rigorous intelligence and poetic use of language to the dramatic investigation of material not often represented on stage."

These traits are represented in Trestle, which takes place in a small town during the 1930s. People are losing their jobs along with any hope for the future. Young people who should be looking ahead to college and careers instead inherit a powerful sense of emptiness. Such a void creates pressure within families that drives them apart at a time when they need to hold on to one another more than ever. The fear of losing one's job, of never getting another one, leads to a fear of being touched, of losing one's mind, or disappearing altogether.

The Chance family is under such pressure. Dray (Buddy Lucas) lost his job at the foundry. His wife Gin (Meg Beach) still has her factory job but anticipates getting laid off any day. Their teenage son Dalton (Lee Lenox) absorbs his parents' worry but detaches himself from them and escapes into a strange, compelling relationship with a train-obsessed girl named Pace Creagan (Jenny Ballard). They meet under the trestle that crosses Pope Lick Creek and watch the train cross every night. Pace has the times memorized, as well as the train's vital statistics. Pace wants Dalton to run across the trestle with her one night, to play chicken with the train as it prepares to cross the bridge. By studying and timing the train's nightly crossing, Pace swears they can beat it. Her obsession with facing down the train rubs off on Dalton, but mostly he's just fascinated by her. Two years his senior, she doesn't act or talk like the other, more proper, girls he knows. She is sexually frank, not coy. She's like Scout Finch grown up and turned wild-eyed and cynical.

Wallace uses the relationships in Trestle to address her interest in power. "You cannot have theater if there are not questions of power, who has it, who doesn't and why," she told a forum during a festival of her works in Atlanta. Pace has power over Dalton; Gin has power over Dray who is debilitated by fear, leaving her to support the family. In the scenes that alternate between those of the Chance household and the creek bed under the trestle, Dalton is in a jail cell, although the play's narrative slowly reveals the details of exactly why he is there. His caretaker, Chas Weaver (Bruce Borin), holds the power as he looms over the silent young prisoner who refuses to speak of his supposed crime.

Wallace's background as a poet reveals itself in the beautiful dialogue of Trestle, which is delicately rendered by the actors. Borin barely contains a kind of fear-driven madness. Surrounded by prisoners all day, people with sentences of death held just above their heads, how can Weaver do anything but absorb the anxiety? Lucas, his huge shoulders hulking forlornly inside a work shirt, is frighteningly intense as the father who is rendered useless by unemployment. In a society in which men pride themselves on being able to provide for their families, he is an outcast, a failure. The result is a desperate hopelessness. "Don't touch me," he says to his wife, who longs for some bit of comfort. Beach's voice quavers to heartbreaking effect.

The scenes between Lenox and Ballard are the most strange and stirring. Ballard's is a genius stroke of casting; she uses her piercing gaze to hypnotize Dalton and the audience. Pace is fascinating and perhaps insane, but she and Dalton create a kind of bond that is perhaps achievable only between two young people whose futures are so bleak. Dalton claims to be college-bound after graduation, but Pace instantly refutes him. "We're not going anywhere," she says, her jaw set. Their lives are only in those moments, pretending to face off the steaming locomotive or daring each other to reveal their weaknesses.

As hardened and fearless as any man of her generation, Pace uses every ounce of energy to remain invulnerable. As Ballard expertly reveals the character's strengths, she also illuminates her moments of weakness. She and Lenox have the chemistry of childhood neighbors who are curious but uncertain about sex and their bodies. Their moments of intimacy are awkward and unconventional but seem completely appropriate for these two people who aren't exactly friends or lovers. They are just lost, together, in the woods.

The set design is typically sparse for the Black Box, but it features an impressive base of a trestle sculpted by Dan DeZarn. The lonely sounds of the train whistle and birds roosting in the trestle set the scene simply but artfully.

Trestle's language and content is definitely for mature audiences, mostly due to intense emotional exchanges. None of the actors shy away from taking emotional risks, and director Kara Kemp allows them, perhaps even pushes them, to face the brink. Her greatest gift to the audience is allowing her actors to take their time, let moments build and unfold. Several such moments, some silent, some infused with Wallace's poetry, are exquisite in their poignancy. By presenting this play with such honesty, Kemp invites us all to face the vulnerability and fear within ourselves.