BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — It has been called a "masterpiece of a contemporary drama" and it is now coming to Kern County.
The Ovation Theatre in Downtown Bakersfield is putting on the play "How I Learned to Drive" for one week only. Behind the scenes, the actors are preparing for the play’s tough conversations on and off the stage.
"How I Learned to Drive" is not your typical coming-of-age story, with difficult topics and themes making this play hard for the audience to watch at times. On the other side of the curtain, the play is hard to perform, as well.
“It is uncomfortable," said actress Lee Gholz. "It is raunchy. It is rough to watch, and if we, the actors who have to do this for four shows in a row, are feeling it, then that means the audience is going to feel it tenfold.”
"How I Learned to Drive" is a Pulitzer Prize-winning drama first performed in the late 1990s. The play follows the main character, Lil Bit, through her teenage years as her relationship with her uncle becomes more and more inappropriate and the abuse sets in.
Miles Barnum plays Uncle Peck in the show. He says the way the character is played is integral to the nature of the relationship with Lil Bit and even the audience
“It allows the audience to see the predator as more human than in other stories, which is a good way to portray the story because oftentimes the person who is doing horrendous things to people is not somebody that stands out in being very noticeable about being a bad person,” explained Barnum.
When playing the complex characters and difficult scenes, the actors say that what happens after is the most important part of separating show and sanity.
“The director, the directing team, all of us take a 20-minute break after every show to allow everyone to get back to center, just brush off everything we just did,” said actor Dylan Rogge.
“The standard protocol when you get overwhelmed this to kind of have the permission in a rehearsal of stepping out of it," said Barnum on the same topic.
Liz B Williams plays the main character, Lil Bit. She says that despite the numerous accounts of abuse within the show, the message is more about her character’s healing.
“This story is definitely a journey of Lil Bit's healing and how she takes all of the things that she’s experienced through her adolescence into her adulthood, what she leaves behind, what she takes with her, and what she decides to do with that experience," said Williams. "I feel like a lot of the time when we talk, especially about pedophilia and about that sort of abuse, we hone in only on the abuse, so that becomes the person's entire identity. Whereas, those people who have experienced traumas like that, that is not their whole identity.”
Williams says that by talking about these experiences, it can help ease the stigma around abuse and give people opportunities to see that they are not alone.
“Because of the heavy nature of the show, we actually have decided to do a talkback after every performance so we don’t just leave the audience kind of hanging," said Williams. "We all kind of take the opportunity to decompress together to discuss things if they have questions that came up or they wanna share stories or anything like that. We’re definitely open to that conversation because this is a conversation that needs to happen."
"How I Learned to Drive" will be running at the Ovation Theatre from Thurs, Aug 3 to Sun, Aug 6. Show times are 7:30 p.m. every day and 2 p.m. on Sunday.
Those interested in purchasing tickets should visit the Ovation Theatre's website.
