Orlando– Mad Cow Theatre is known for bringing some of the most compelling works of theater to the heart of Downtown Orlando. Its newest production will follow as nothing short of that, introducing theater-goers to a contemporary love triangle that’s far from being a “cock-and-bull story.”
Shipped from British playwright Mike Bartlett and now making its rounds in the U.S., Cock opens June 20 and runs through July 20 at The Zehngebot-Stonerock Theatre. The play follows the story of John, who takes a break from a troubled relationship with his boyfriend of many years. During this break, he meets a woman who intrigues his interest in many ways. The play follows John’s journey as he explores the complexity of relationships, love and sexuality.
“There’s lots of things that make up a person and ultimately what we are watching, during this 90-minute play, is the struggle that this individual has about choosing the person,” says Mitzi Maxwell, executive director of Mad Cow. “Of course, it just so happens that one person is of one gender and one is of another. I feel that the struggle kind of goes beyond if one is straight or one is gay. I think it’s about loving another person.”
Maxwell works to bring productions to Mad Cow that display great diversity and touch on topics that might not be conventional for other production companies to show. Along with that, Mad Cow has brought on board Aradhana Tiwari, Mad Cow’s current director in residence, to provide direction for the play.
“The play questions labels and sexual identity, and really puts relationships under the microscope,” says Tiwari. “What are the tenants of relationship that we evaluate when we decide who do we want to be with and why are we with them? [The play] really forces the audience to question maybe what they already thought about relationships.”
Tiwari has worked with Mad Cow since 2012, where she directed the production of The Road to Mecca. It was the first production in The Zehngebot-Stonerock Theatre, the black-box venue at the Church Street location.
One of the most challenging features of the piece is the production is done with no props or set. The only elements are the characters—John, M (the man he’s with), W (the woman he’s with) and F (the father of M)—of the play. For Tiwari, it allowed her to approach the play in a fresh new way, where the centerpiece of the story is focused on John and how he interacts with the other characters.
“We can explore how visually we can show the audience — perhaps through movement or through motion—what may be going on inside someone internally and use things that are not ‘realistic’ to demonstrate what’s happening inside when we have all of these very normal relationship conversations and conflicts,” Tiwari says.
But despite what may seem like a plot centered on a gay character, who questions his sexuality and explores facets of bisexuality, Tiwari says that the play actually uses these components to break away from social conventions about gender and sexual identity, transcending stereotypes about relationships and showing how the same dynamics work within all relationship archetypes.
“There are so many people that have strong opinions in so many different ways, the problem about this play is that I think it offers a possibility for something other than these words: ‘gay,’ ‘straight,’ ‘bisexual’ or ‘transgender,'” Tiwari says. “It is saying we don’t even have to live inside of one of these words if we don’t want to—we can just be.”
And making his Orlando debut as the role of John, Chris Crawford reveals how playing such a profoundly conflicted character will make the story that much more real to the audience.
“It’s one of those things that no matter what side of the fence you are on—as far as your views on homosexuality and heterosexuality or whatever—there’s something that everybody in here identifies with,” Crawford says. “And there’s a little bit in each character, where you go ‘Oh, I kind of feel like that’ or ‘Oh, I don’t get that at all.'”
Crawford, who previously ran a theater company in Tulsa, Okla., for six years, said this play will be more than just coming to see a show for the audience—it will be an experience. He says the story allows the audience to realize the labels society has placed on how we love— it isn’t how or what but who. John’s struggle is real, so the audience will be able to identify with his personal conflicts.
“As I started to read it [the script] more, I would go ‘Oh, I have felt this in my life. I have gone through situations like this and had relationships with these qualities,'” Crawford says. “And then all of the sudden, it started leaping off the page and into my heart. And it is a cock fight, and it is the ways that we pick and peck at each other as human beings. And it [the script] is even written where you have phrase, phrase, phrase, not a paragraph. You have just this kind of constant picking and constant pecking, and that’s more at the root of anything else of why it’s called Cock.”
Crawford said at first it was difficult to even like his character, John. Through working with Tiwari, he eventually began to embrace John and his struggle on essentially figuring out who he should love, discovering there is no definitive right answer or word to describe his sexual preference.
“If you are in the audience and are of the belief that you are born a certain way, I think that you will be questioned. If you believe that you choose to be a certain way, your beliefs will be questioned,” Crawford says. “And I think that’s what’s brilliant about this play—the audience becomes John.”
The topics of gender identity, sexual identity and labels placed on people from society are also not just an everyday struggle with people within the LGBT community and with heterosexual individuals, but it has been an issue addressed even by researchers.
UCF associate professor and licensed clinical psychologist Charles Negy, who has 20 years of clinical and teaching experience with a focus on how variables such as race, ethnicity, culture, gender and sexual orientation influence people’s attitudes and behaviors, agrees that the overall categorization of people into a “defined” sexuality or preference is difficult because society itself is too diverse.
“Another misconception is that one is either ‘gay’ or ‘straight,'” Negy says. “Many people, including gays themselves, struggle with ambiguity and see the world in black and white—paper or plastic, Coke or Pepsi.
“Very few individuals report being 100% gay or 100% heterosexual. Most of us humans are more flexible than that. So, many ‘gays’ may actually be bisexual in various degrees, and that may cause them to question who they are in reality from time to time. Of course, they feel the pressure from both gays and straights to ‘pick an orientation and stick with it.'”
This is one of the great struggles that occurs within Cock, because John has never loved a woman before ‘W.’ He then questions what is this new awakened feeling and where does it come from, and for 90-minutes we join him on his journey to realization of how labels are not needed when it comes to relationships and love.
And for Heather Leonardi’s character, W (the woman), she believes that the audience will—because of how the black box is set up and the production is played out—engage in almost a “spectator sport,” rooting for either M or W. Just like rooting for your favorite sports team, it’s not that you’re going to be rooting for the right team, you will be rooting for your team (or in this case the person John should be with).
“Right is not black and white—there are lots of shades of gray,” Leonardi says. “So when these people are speaking, what is the truth to them in their heart might not be something everyone in the play or the crowd agrees with but there’s truth to where everyone in the play is coming from. There is not one character that is right at all.”
And like cast, director and Negy all agree upon, ultimately the play will resonate with the idea that in the end any type of relationship—gay, straight or other—is difficult. And when we then have to take into the consideration the labels of society and what is accepted because of those labels, it then becomes even harder no matter who you are.
“This is a play about labels, and redefining and transcending those labels,” Leonardi says. “It is also not about a woman in a relationship with a gay man. It’s about a woman in a relationship. It’s about people in relationships.”
MORE INFO:
WHAT: Cock
WHEN: June 20- July 20
WHERE: The Zehngebot-Stonerock Theatre (Black box venue on Church Street)
TICKETS: MadCowTheatre.com
