UCR Professor's Book Inspires Original Play

Los Angeles-based theatre group the Son of Semele Ensemble performed their final iteration of the original piece “Sea Seed” at the Barbara and Art Culver Center of the Arts Feb. 16. “Sea Seed,” a staged reading of a full play, was inspired by “Moving Matters paths of Serial Migration,” a book by Susan Ossman, an anthropology professor at University of California, Riverside, and Moving Matters Traveling Workshop. The cast of six, which included Dr. Erith Jaffe-Berg, department chair and associate professor of the UCR Department of Theater, Film and Digital Production, additionally based the script and their individual performances off of a fictional story written by Daniel Getzoff. The Son of Semele Ensemble performed several iterations of the piece at the Culver Center of the Arts and tweaked the script each time afterward, after hearing feedback from the audiences. The entire process, which took two years, resulted in the final product the six cast members presented Tuesday night, to an enthusiastic crowd of about 40 that was comprised of students, professors and members of the community. “It was just a real pleasure to present it to this audience tonight,” Jaffe-Berg said in the question-and-answer session that followed the performance. “It has been all throughout a wonderful experience of bringing audience and performers together and kind of collaborating on a script, but tonight was particularly exceptional.” The play featured Jaffe-Berg alongside Hilletje Bashew, Melina Bielefelt, Don Boughton, Matt McCray and Paula Rebelo. Each character represented a different aspect of the play’s theme, which was serial migration. Serial migration can be defined as the quality belonging to a person who moves throughout several places or countries, being able to call each one home. In “Sea Seed,” the characters all played a part in the Channing Berkowitz family, though each one had a different background and story that led to them eventually calling the family, and New York City, where the story is based, home. “I think there’s a bit of that home is people in the play, but I think by the end of it, there’s enough argument that place really matters,” McCray said. The unique aspect of “Sea Seed” was that all the actors had a part in the writing process, and therefore each embodied at least some characteristic of the person they were playing. “These characters are a big part of who we actually are,” Rebelo said during the question-and-answer portion after the play. Rebelo played Esperanza, the woman who had married into the family through brother Charles but had since been widowed. Sisters Nina (Bielefelt) and Colette (Jaffe-Berg) played two sides of the same coin – Colette, who struggled with the desire to travel and the desire to be with her husband, Fred (McCray), and the other Nina, who grappled with her place in the family being perpetually single while also trying to preserve the legacy of the family. Boughton played Ed, Nina and Colette’s father, who was not sure if he wanted to stay in New York to be with his family or retire elsewhere. Bashew played Maddie, a young woman from South Africa who was marrying Annie, the third sister, and flew into New York City to meet and visit with her in-laws-to-be. “I liked the multilingual aspects of it because that’s actually how I was introduced to Dr. Jaffe-Berg,” said Natalia Zufferey, a senior studying in the theatre, film and digital production department at UCR. “I really enjoyed the fact that some of the characters spoke different languages, and you could tell that these were the languages of the actors who act in it.” The performance was in the form of a staged reading, so the actors held the scripts in hand throughout the entire play. The props they used were limited to suitcases, chairs and other small pieces of furniture which were used interchangeably as other props such as coffee tables and a bar throughout the show. Sound effects like guns shooting and breakfast cooking on the stove were also used sporadically. “Considering that there was minimal amount of props, they really told the story well,” said Reasey Heang, financial administrative officer at UCR for the Performing Arts Administration. “It had all the emotions in there, and they didn’t have all the fancy sets. It was amazing. Low budget play, but it told the story.” Though the actors said there are no definitive plans as of yet as to where the play could go, some audience members felt it has the potential to be produced in an off Broadway theatre group. “I think it’s quite good, and I keep thinking this could definitely be produced off Broadway at a nonprofit institution because it feels like a very contemporary American play dealing with a family that’s highly privileged, white, dealing with ideas of protecting their resources and legacy and dealing with larger ideas about travel, connections and disconnections, but at the same time espousing a liberal belief of individualism and not actually radically confronting social oppression,” said Donatella Galella, assistant professor in the theatre, film and digital production department at UCR. Audience members participated in feedback of the play after the one hour and 45-minute-long production ended. The cast was able to answer questions and share some of the thought processes behind their characters’ decisions, backgrounds and more during this portion. Before concluding, Jaffe-Berg encouraged people with any more questions to continue reaching out to her or any of the other cast members via email. “The comments and responses are always very valuable to us,” she said.