Da Doo Ron Ron | Ron Pederson acts while Ron Jenkins writes and directs the much-awaited world premiere of the one-man show Extinction Song.
DETAILS
EXTINCTION SONG
Written and directed by Ron Jenkins. Starring Ron Pederson. Rice Theatre, The Citadel. Mar 28-Apr 19. Tickets available through the Citadel box office (425-1820)
“You could say the story’s about two days in the life of James, a seven-year-old,” offers writer/director Ron Jenkins about his new play Extinction Song. However, such a simple synopsis does not give the complexity of the work enough credit.
Rather than an elaborate family drama with an ensemble cast, the one-man show is an account of how young James (played by Ron Pederson) uses his overactive imagination to escape his troubled reality. It’s quite a world he creates for himself, too: James goes so far as to proclaim that he was raised by a pack of wolves.
As Jenkins sees it, imagination is a way for the character to change what he doesn’t like about his life. “James doesn’t use it as a crutch,” he says. “He’s just reinvented the mythology of where he comes from. I think all kind of mythology is meant to soothe or teach. So he’s just reinvented himself because the family that is his real family, he’s kind of stuck with them [and] he finds it’s an injustice. I think when things are bad for kids or when things are good for kids, your imagination is a thing that couches you from terrible injustices, frustrations, anger, and fear.”
Jenkins’ empathy for children is quite clear as he discusses the play, frequently citing examples of how they — and James in particular — can be misunderstood by the very authority figures who are supposed to guide them. It’s clear that in his mind, Extinction Song is a reaction to what happens when adults forget what it is like to fantasize all your problems away.
“I think we lose our perspective of what it was like to be small,” he says. “People beat us down and we become older and more pragmatic and practical. The things that were incredible to us as kids, [these] big and huge problems get tackled in a more practical, day-to-day kind of way. It becomes drudgery. We let the drudgery in our practical, adult heads get in the way of what we truly would like.”
Indeed, one of the major sources of Extinction Song’s power is the way it reminds us how we can never be sure of what a child is thinking, and how we should never assume it’s a matter of little significance. “The thing that I was trying to get back to was that invisible language,” Jenkins says. “You watch a kid play and it’ll seem like the craziest thing, but if you were to go up to the kid and ask, ‘What are you doing?’ he could be building an entire civilization in his head.”
It’s through such adventurous use of imagination that James tries to protect himself against the cruelties of his alcoholic father and apathetic mother. Unfortunately, reality has a way of keeping even the most creatively minded children grounded. “He’s seven, you know what I mean?” Jenkins laments. “You can’t defend yourself when you’re seven. You’re just not fucking capable.”
If it sounds like Jenkins has a lot at stake personally with Extinction Song, it’s because a considerable amount of work has gone into bringing James’ story to the stage. Jenkins first conceived the play in 1999, initially imagining it as a large production narrated by a child. But he soon realized that wasn’t the path he wanted to take.
“As I started to write, I went, ‘This play, to me, just has one voice,’” he says. “And it was the voice of the seven-year-old kid. So as I started to write, I felt like it was going to be a one-man show, and as we started to work on it, we were [always] going to get [Ron Pederson] to play it.... I wouldn’t be able to do it without him. I think playwrights overwrite because we want to make sure everything’s clear and concise. When an actor comes in and breathes life into the play, all of the sudden you start seeing that translation between what you’ve set out on paper and what the living, breathing human being can do for that writing.”
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