Small town not small minded

When people began asking Judevine director Patrick Tangredi what the play was about, he had trouble answering. A play composed of 26 stories with no single story that stands as the main theme isn’t easy to pigeonhole.

It was back in September, when auditions for the play began at Portland Community College, that Tangredi realized he would have to develop a comprehensive answer to the question.

“It’s a series of vignettes,” Tangredi said. “It’s a play about characters that have their comedies and tragedies in a small town.”

After working as a poet for nearly 20 years, David Budbill wrote Judevine in 1984, based on his previously published book of poems of the same title. The play jumps from one character’s story to the next, their town of residence acting as the only string tying each story together.

The impoverished fictional town lies in the northern mountains of Vermont and embodies the classic example of middle-of-nowhere America. The characters lead tough, often repressed lives full of hardship and lost dreams. Their struggle to survive manifests in unique ways through their individual stories, all of which are subtly interwoven.

The play’s themes—small town adversity and portraits of average people—are commonplace in 20th century American plays and literature, from Waiting for Godot to Working. Our interest in the workingman, particularly in a small-town Americana setting, is yet again satisfied through small-scale efforts to survive, reflecting the larger trials and errors of a nation borne of mismatched peasants.

“The playwright is known more for his poetry than for anything else,” Tangredi said. “He doesn’t come from a theater background, so he breaks a lot of theater rules in an interesting way. … The only thing that keeps this play together is that it all takes place in this fictional town.”

Tangredi relates it to Our Town, a three-act play by Thornton Wilder, but suggests that it stands as a 21st century version of the classic. He claims that, in the absence of a plot, the play can be considered postmodern. While this term gets thrown around in a lot of confusing fashions, it can be helpful in explaining what makes the play modern and unique.
Since its debut in 1984, Judevine has been performed across the country, from the East Coast to Alaska, with over 50 productions in its short history. The PCC production will be the play’s premiere in Oregon.

The cast is larger than usual for PCC productions, with over 20 members. A flood of students showed up for auditions and the play was easy enough to divide into a larger number of roles. Cast members are all PCC students and Tangredi is head of the theater program at the school.

Judevine will be showing for the next two weeks, including a special $5 showing at 11 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 19.