What drives certain journalists to seek out war zones, cameras or notepads in hand, to cover atrocities and disasters and the world’s unending suffering? That’s one of the questions propelling Time Stands Still, the play by Pulitzer winner Donald Margulies now being staged by Red Turnip Theater (with remaining weekend performances until March 8 at Whitespace, Chino Roces Ave. Extension).
But don’t worry — the play is no headline-news bummer filled with hand-wringing polemic, but rather a carefully crafted (and yes, entertaining) dialectic about what people want out of relationships, what they want from their media, and what they want out of life.
Sarah (Ana Abad Santos) is a photojournalist in a long relationship with James (Nonie Buencamino), a hard news reporter who’s also been embedded in war-torn areas for close to a decade; now she’s come home from a landmine injury in the Middle East, recovering from a shattered leg, facial scars and a lot of emotional damage.
Sarah’s partly restless — eager to get back to her next assignment — and partly haunted by the realities of her profession. Like James, she gets uncomfortably close to human misery on a regular basis, but tells herself she does it because “people need to know” the facts.
But when it becomes clear that James is ready to settle down into a “comfortable” domestic life rather than chase the next battlefront, the tension between the two leads makes Time Stands Still a subtle commentary on First World problems, and how we’d really prefer to be entertained rather than being told the ugly truth all the time.
Is this a subtle commentary on the decidedly commercial tastes of local theater? Hard to say if that’s what drew the Turnips to pick this award-winning play — the subtext about choosing entertainment over the constant bludgeoning of reality. Certainly, Red Turnip doesn’t want to bludgeon us with reality; they do seek to entertain. They just feel the Philippines doesn’t need another revival of Mamma Mia!. Or at least they don’t feel they have to be the ones to revive it. Fortunately, Time Stands Still has crackling wit and humor to go along with the unfolding parlor drama.
Coming from a “lighter” sphere of journalism ourselves, my wife Therese and I couldn’t help feeling that the play spoke loudly and directly to the choices we’ve made as journalists (lifestyle journalists, that is; not gung-ho Pulitzer Prize seekers).
And I confess that heading into a war zone has never really been on my bucket list. Same for my wife. It seems to take a rare combination of drive, passion and detachment to make someone yearn for sticky situations. Yet I have a sneaking suspicion most “lesser” journalists (those of us behind the front lines) harbor a feeling that their lives (or careers) are somewhat incomplete without jumping into the fray. It’s probably the same itch that drives young men to enlist to fight in wars, or people like NBC anchor Brian Williams to lie about his “combat” experience.
And while we may consider the “good” we occasionally do for people through journalism, it sort of pales next to what the hardcore photojournalists out there like Lynsey Addario and Tim Hetherington bring to the public eye. Time Stands Still focuses on these and other matters — the ethics of shooting pictures, for instance, while someone is dying from shrapnel wounds right in front of you. Through the character of Mandy (Giannina Ocampo), girlfriend of Sarah and James’s editor, Richard (Nor Domingo), we get the perspective of a civilian “outsider” who might think it more humane to pick up an injured baby and rush her to a hospital rather than snap her dying moments on a Nikon D4. “She would have died before we got her anywhere,” opines Sarah. “This way, people get to know what happened. That’s what we do. We document.”
Ocampo and Domingo are perfectly fine as the satellites in this play, but the real sparks occur between Santos and Buencamino, who circle center stage (actually, Santos is the one usually being circled around — crutches and all) in a nonstop examination of their commitment to one another, and to their chosen careers. Santos here is particularly strong, because her face is the focal point for much of the dialogue and emotional transitions taking place. (Kudos to director Rem Zamora, who stages Time Stands Still in a way that allows each actor to face the audience for a pivotal moment.) In fact, the acting is strong enough for you to eventually ignore all the detailed scenery (meant to evoke a Brooklyn apartment) and the occasional audio problems (too much echo) and just focus on the key exchanges between actors.
In truth, this is what Red Turnip, now finishing its second season, has been striving for — to bring more straight plays to Manila, something actors can really sink their teeth into without resorting to props and stagy mannerisms. When Time Stands Still connects, as with previous productions, all you need is a stage and a pair of actors to pull it off. Let the large companies bring in the candy-coated musicals; Red Turnip wants you to eat your vegetables.
Which is not as bad as it sounds, because when the pickings are good, like Time Stands Still, you don’t mind being treated like a thinking adult with sensible eating habits.
One key crisis in the play concerns a piece James submits to his magazine about the Iraqi conflict. When it gets killed by the magazine — because another atrocity piece is set to run in the same issue — James is furious; but that doesn’t stop him from turning his attentions to writing analytical horror movie essays instead. It’s his own form of escapism. Somehow, writing about “fake” horror becomes more tolerable than focusing on real-life horror.
And that’s what the play’s really about: how we make choices to make our lives bearable. Because those of us in journalism know that the bad news of the world will always be there: it’s an endless merry-go-round that requires an endless supply of media people to report on it.
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Catch Red Turnip’s Time Stands Still at Whitespace, 2314 Chino Roces Ave. Extension, Makati until March 8. Call Ticketworld at 891-9999 or email redturniptheater@gmail.com for ticket information.