Photo Courtesy of Theatre Gigante
Michael Stebbins
When Isabelle Kralj and Mark Anderson saw Dust performed in Slovenia, they knew they wanted to bring the play to Milwaukee. Written by Hungary’s most acclaimed contemporary playwright, György Spiró, Dust is a dark comedy about a bickering couple trying to stay afloat in a rapidly changing world. Kralj and Anderson, Theatre Gigante co-directors, staged Dust here in 2013, the play’s first professional performance in the U.S. Dust returns to Milwaukee this fall as Theatre Gigante’s local season opener.
Dust was written in post-Communist Hungary and echoes the travails of ordinary people finding their footing in a new world order. But as Kralj says, “it is a play that could be taking place anywhere today—familiar to us here in the United State, and familiar to societies the world over, as the middle class dwindles, and more and more people struggle to meet even their most basic needs.” The play’s couple are anxiety ridden, and their unease only worsens when the husband brings home a lottery ticket with a winning number. Anderson calls their unexpected win “an ironic statement on just being lucky. The ticket promises an escape …” but to what?
Kralj costars with longtime collaborator Michael Stebbins. Anderson will direct. “It’s very much a domestic drama with no abstraction in movement or performance,” says Anderson. He explains that the simple staging, a couple of chairs and a table to suggest a kitchen, “is about finding the honesty. Spiró says it’s a comedy, but it’s a comedy like Chekov wrote comedies with pathos in and around it.”
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Kralj adds that they “fell in love with the play due to the cleverness of the playwright, the timeliness of the issues, and the comedic and dark approach to presenting the issues. Dust is very much within the way we like to work. A timely message—without hitting people over the head with a hammer.”
Theatre Gigante’s season actually began last month in Italy, where they performed a seven-show run of the absurdist comedy they debuted last season in Milwaukee, HereThereWhere, written by Kralj, Anderson and Italian actor Alessandro Renda. Dust runs Oct. 25-Nov. 3 at Kenilworth 508 Theatre. For tickets and more information, visit theatregigante.org.
