I’m George Walker
The Amplified Series at IU’s Department of Theatre, Drama and Contemporary Dance seeks to open up the theatre canon to Black and Hispanic voices. Rachel Lynett’s Adored You does just that.
Lynett wrote and directed the show. Maya Jones, a veteran IU MFA candidate from Ohio, plays Alex, a passionate Honduran, black, queer woman. Gracie Harrison, an IU freshman from Houston is linguistics professor Lila, half white, half Hispanic. Isabelle Bohannon a sophomore from Zionsville offers the stage directions.
Alex and Lila meet for a blind date, ah! the wonders of the internet. We’re pleased to view their uncomfortable meeting though Zoom. And, with the help of Isabelle giving us the mixed-up-date cues
Alex comes from a passionate family with lots of ups and downs in her parent’s relationship. They vigorously don’t accept her relationship with Lila. Lila’s parents have been married for forty-two years and are quite accepting of her choice of a mate.
Adored You is a short play, barely forty-minutes. There are perhaps ten scenes as their relationship goes well past the usual three years, on into forty-two months.
The choices in a zoom presentation by director Lynett present both of the actors seated. Jones is by far the most animated while Harrison is much more restrained.
There are three strains. One, there’s the usual mix of emotions and a mix of personalities in their relationship
A second is that Alex wants a baby. After three tries, she simply can’t carry to term. She begs Lila to have the child. Her partner refuses, remaining quietly indifferent and suggesting an unappealing alternative, adoption.
Then there’s the third. Lila is offered a much better job in Atlanta and Alex, who thinks of Atlanta as the south, objects strongly. I’m not clear on whether she decides that Atlanta is not the south, but that decision is at least skipped over.
In a final scene, Alex hints to Lila in a four-page presentation…that’s interrupted in the first paragraph by professor Lila. She’s over-whelmed by the proposal of marriage, and I think she accepts. Again, its not a definite done-deal.
The final scene…and I at first thought that the author was copping out…duplicates Alex and Lila’s opening hesitant, get together. I think it was a master stroke, and with the twists and turns, the only way that Adored You could possibly end.
This coming weekend there will be another new play on Friday and Saturday. Stick Fly by Lydia R. Diamond will be on zoom, as part of the IU Department of Theatre, Drama and Contemporary Dance’s Amplified series.
I’m George Walker
