JULIA PARK "A Lie of the Mind," starring eight UCLA
student actors, depicts the impact of dysfunctional families on
children’s future relationships.
By Kate Bristow
Daily Bruin Contributor
The enigmatic writing of American playwright Sam Shepard
presented a challenge to Theater C572 students this quarter.
Offered only to Master of Fine Arts students, the intensive
production and performance laboratory meets for three hours a day,
five times a week and for the past six weeks has focused entirely
upon mastering Shepard’s drama, “A Lie of the
Mind.”
Starring the eight student actors enrolled in the class,
“A Lie of the Mind” opens tonight in the Little
Theater, Macgowan Hall at 8 p.m.
The eight characters depict two families that have been united
by marriage. The wife, Beth’s, family is from backcountry
Montana while the husband, Jake’s, is from Southern
California. Both have little money and provide a very real
representation of Middle America. Following the intertwined
destinies of the two families, the play examines the nature of true
love, the false expectations people may have upon entering
relationships and how couples learn to cope with the reality of
life.
“The play looks at the difficulties people face in staying
together in marriages and how families complicate that in terms of
how they support or don’t support the children growing up,
and prepare them to be marital partners with someone else,”
said director professor Michael McLain.
The play came out of a time in America when consciousness of the
women’s movement had reached a pinnacle, and because of this
it focuses largely upon the roles of men in marriage. Jake’s
father is an absent character in the story. He is an alcoholic and
abusive man that leaves his family very early in Jake’s
life.
“It takes a very tough look at men growing up in American
culture, and at how unprepared men had been to live fully
integrated lives with their female partners,” McLain
said.
Jake’s marriage is an abusive one. After brutally beating
his wife and ultimately giving her brain damage, he becomes a
paranoid manic-depressive and swears that even his family is out to
get him.
 MARY HOLSCHER Professor McLain directs
his students in an adaptation of Sam Shepard’s play "A Lie in the
Mind," premiering tonight. “Jake goes through this whole
downward spiral of reality,” said actor Alessandro Trinca.
“He comes from a very dysfunctional family and thinks that he
has killed his wife when in fact he has only given her brain
damage. It follows the theme of a son not wanting to turn into his
father, and Jake’s denial of his likeness to his father
drives him insane.”
Other themes of the play include the destructive impulses of
people versus their ability to integrate with society and the
natural urges of human beings to be independent versus their need
to fully integrate their lives with another. Such complex thematic
structures required a lot of work on the part of the students and
professor.
“It’s a very challenging piece
psychologically,” McLain said. “We are getting a lot of
satisfaction out of solving its many mysteries.”
Although “A Lie of the Mind” begins with
Jake’s beating of his wife and deals largely with his mental
breakdown, the play is rare in that all of the characters are equal
in their prominence on stage and equal in their contributions to
the unfortunate state of Jake and Beth’s marriage.
“”˜A Lie of the Mind’ was very challenging to
pick apart, especially the part that I’m playing,” said
actor Jerri Tubbs.
Tubbs plays the part of Lorraine, Jake’s chain-smoking and
controlling mother.
McLain and his students have taken a new approach to “A
Lie of the Mind” and have changed the staging of the play
more to their liking. They experimented with the use of space and
lighting in an attempt to reproduce the characters’
psychological journeys throughout the play. Because the play will
be performed in Macgowan’s Little Theater, the audience will
be seated on risers above the stage and will look down onto the
play from above.
“It’s sort of like they are peeping down into the
minds of the characters,” said Trinca.
The play would normally encompass the typical
“three-wall” backdrop and lighting but instead will use
a more fluid space for the set, one that will hopefully be
more exciting to the audience.
“The lighting is beautiful,” said Trinca, “the
set designer has done an incredible job and it’s going to be
a truly beautiful show.”