Jim Lowe Previews RED in a great feature in today's Times Argus

reprinted with permission:

May 26, 2016

 

‘Red’ Mark Rothko seeks his art — and his soul

Mark Rothko (1903-1970) was one of America’s foremost painters, labeled an abstract expressionist, and John Logan’s Tony Award-winning play “Red” is a fictional take on the artist making a seminal decision in his career. Still, Douglas Sprigg, who is directing the Lost Nation Theater production, sees the drama as an even more basic questioning of art and its practitioners.

“This play will have special appeal to anyone who has been involved in any artistic activity,” Sprigg said. “I like the fact that the play is exploring the life of Mark Rothko, who had very strong feelings about what art should be and shouldn’t be. 

STEFAN HARD / STAFF PHOTO Kim Bent is master artist Mark Rothko, foreground, seeking inspiration in the blank canvas as his assistant Ken is played by Levi Penley.

      (Sprigg continues:)  “One competing issue is: To what extent is art about … finding out about the pain in our lives and understanding, as opposed to entertaining? And can it do both?” 

“Red,” Logan’s two-character drama, will be presented by Lost Nation Theater June 2-19 at Montpelier City Hall Arts Center 

Opening in 2009 in London and on Broadway in 2010, both productions of “Red” starred Anthony Molina as Rothko and Eddie Redmayne as his fictional assistant Ken. Both the play and Redmayne won Tony Awards. 

Set in Rothko’s Bowery studio in 1958, the artist and his assistant are working feverishly to create a series of paintings commissioned for the Four Seasons restaurant in the brand-new Seagram Building on Park Avenue. At the time, it was the largest commission ever. While Rothko works, he talks about the meaning of art. Brilliant but insecure, morose yet funny, Rothko schools Ken, but is ultimately challenged by him. 

    “I have always been drawn to theater as something that helps me understand the difficulties in life. This play tackles that,” Sprigg said. “But at the same time, it gives its due. The assistant argues the position at one point: Why does all art have to be gut wrenching? Why can’t it be entertaining and light?”

And then there is the painter himself, a man of ideas as well as art.

“I think anyone who doesn’t know about Rothko would benefit from knowing about him, because he was a fascinating personality,” Sprigg said. “I think the artistic view, certainly expressed in dollars, is that his work is probably greater than (Jackson) Pollock’s — who more people have heard of.” 

“The education of what an artist should have is brought up,” Sprigg said. “Rothko’s point of view is that the thinking you do is more important than the actual painting.”

Kim Bent, Lost Nation’s founding artistic director, who is playing Rothko, feels he can relate directly.

“Although I never was really into the visual arts, or modern art, my career in the performing arts, I feel, parallels Ken’s,” Bent said. “He’s a young, idealist artist who has the opportunity to apprentice himself to this master, this man who’s becoming quite famous and powerful in the art world. 

“He commits to that, which is what I did as a young performing artist, and gets very heavily involved in the experimental theater as an actor,” Bent said. “Gradually, over the course of my lifetime, I grew through that phase to become whoever it is I am now.” 

Rothko is forced to face his own evolution by someone who is just starting out on that path.

 “The play brings us to a point where Rothko, in a sense, passes the torch,” Bent said. “It’s a wonderful portrait of this evolution of how we grow, not only as artists, but as people.” 

New York actor Levi Penley, in the role of Ken, has few clues — or restrictions — to go on in creating his character, unlike Rothko who is an actual person and well-known. According to the playwright, Ken grew up in Iowa, real middle-America, and spent much of his youth in foster homes before finding art.

“Who Ken really is, is the other artistic viewpoint, though he agrees with Rothko for so much of the play. But he turns into his own person,” Penley said. “So the things that made Ken who he is are Ken’s ideas, Ken’s discoveries, Ken’s realizations throughout the course of the play.” 

It’s not necessary to know anything about Rothko to get this play, as Penley hadn’t even heard of the artist when he first read it.

   “When it really comes down to it,” Penley said, “it’s a relationship that forms over two years, and you’re seeing two people on stage have a relationship. Ultimately for me, that’s whyI watch live theater.”

   Lost Nation Theater presents “Red,” John Logan’s portrait of painter Mark Rothko, June 2-19 at City Hall Arts Center, 39 Main St. in Montpelier. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $25-$30, $20-$25 for students and seniors; call 802-229-0492, or go online to www. lostnationtheater.org  .