Image courtesy Renaissance Theaterworks
The Cake - Renaissance Theaterworks
The theme of Renaissance Theaterworks’ 29th season is “What Really Matters,” a good subject for those of us struggling to sleep at night. The company’s season opens Friday, Oct. 22, with The Cake by stage and screen writer (television’s This is Us) Bekah Brunstetter.
The Cake was inspired by the widely publicized story of a Colorado baker who refused on religious grounds to make a wedding cake for a same sex couple a few years back. The couple went to court. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission decided in their favor. The baker took it to the Supreme Court, whose majority exonerated him in a limited ruling that left the large issue of the line between religious expression and discrimination unsettled.
Brunstetter said she wrote the play to explain her support for gay marriage to her father, a conservative Republican and former North Carolina state senator. Her script reads as a very humane comedy, timely in ways that go beyond its specific issue. The efforts of the play’s characters to make peace in one small battle of the culture war can serve as a blueprint, offering hope that we can bridge deep ideological divides given some time and good will.
Questioning Things
In the play, two young women—Jen and Macy—are about to wed. Their North Carolina hometown has a master cake maker, Della, who was Jen’s mom’s best friend. Mom died a few years back and Jen became a surrogate daughter to the childless Della. They haven’t seen one another for a while, and now here’s Jen and her lesbian fiancé, asking Della to design their wedding cake.
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“Della is a warm, loving woman who hasn’t questioned a lot of the things in her life because she hasn’t had to,” Suzan Fete says. Fete is the show’s director and the company’s artistic director. “She goes to an Evangelical church that teaches that people—and particularly women—need to obey the word of the Lord. She’s never had to question whether her beliefs are worth believing. She believes that homosexuality is wrong, but she doesn’t know any homosexuals, or doesn’t realize that she does.
“Right away, Della sees how much Jen and Macy love each other,” Fete continues. “And she loves Jen. So how can she respond? It’s easy to demonize someone when they’re far away from you. But when they’re standing right in front of you, and they’re someone you love? Della can’t write Jen off as some crazy liberal. Nor can Jen write Della off as a bigoted Southerner because she knows Della’s heart.”
Patience, Tolerance
To complicate matters further, Macy is African American with a lifelong experience of racism. And Della’s conservative husband Tim is described by the playwright as “a good old boy.” All the characters need time to wrap their brains around the situation,” Fete says. “They need to be more patient with each other. That’s what the play is about, for everybody.”
Della will be played by Tara Mallen, founder and artistic director of Rivendell Theatre Ensemble in Chicago which, like Renaissance, offers “theatre by women for everyone.” Mallen played the role at Rivendell in 2018. Sam White, an actor with Forward Theatre in Madison, plays her husband. De Paul University MFA student Courtney Marie Tucker plays Macy. Milwaukee’s April Paul is Jen. And Milwaukee Ballet’s Michael Pink makes a recorded guest appearance.
A cake is like an artwork. “You never make a cake to eat by yourself,” Fete summarizes. “Cake is meant to be shared. It’s communal. It’s communion.”
Performances are October 22-November 14 at the company’s new artistic home, shared with Next Act Theatre, at 255 N. Water St. For details, including Covid protocols, call 414-278-0756 or visit r-t-w.com.
