Student-written play joins color, music and humor

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. On the surface, Bums and Monkeys, which runs at Theater~Intime from March 27-29 to April 3-5, may appear to be a rather conventional contemporary production with all the typical elements of angst and disillusionment. But add two sex-crazed grandparents, a dose of circus music, an absurdist twist and a student writer and director and you have the material for an entertaining and decidedly original production.

The show, written and directed by David Brundige '04, revolves around the attempts of the main character Jennifer, a 17-year-old girl, to break away from the boredom of her suburban home and the stifling attitude of her family.

"This play is basically a negative reaction to being bored in most other plays I've seen," Brundige said. "It is for those who want to leave their everyday lives and enter the theater, first and foremost, to enjoy themselves."

Frustrated by her environment, Jennifer, played by Barbara Luse '04, runs away from home, and begins traveling from one home to the next in an attempt to find that extra something that her own home cannot offer her.

"[Jennifer] is almost like an infant seeing the world for the first time and wanting to pick up everything, or a toddler learning to walk," Luse said in an email. "She's walking into everything, going everywhere, wanting to take everything in and experience it all. There is a lot in this play that isn't realistic or normal by ordinary standards so it's challenging to convey how Jennifer would respond to these things."

Throughout the show, Jennifer encounters a number of people who offer her different visions of what life should be like, including a bum who explains to her the Hindu idea of the world soul, but ultimately fulfillment is elusive and instead everything ends up leaving her empty and alone.

While much of the basic set up of the play may seem to be a typical spin on the teen angst story, Brundige takes the plot and twists it in a startling and devilishly funny way, creating a play whose absurdity says volumes about suburban boredom and complacency.

"This play deals with the desire in many of us, who have led such privileged lives, to step outside our shoes and see how we'd meet certain challenges," said Ben Fitzi Guttfreund Lehrer '03, who plays Adolf and Brad Pitt. "It also deals with hip-hop culture, and how white kids slumming doesn't really ring true in this day and age. I think this is particularly tender for a Princeton audience, so David's humor and wit comes through especially strongly in making these cultural observations n a light way that we can all laugh over."

Bums and Monkeys is also unique in that it is a student-written play that developed out of a class Brundige took last year. Brundige describes the piece as an "anti-living room" play, an attempt to break out of the conventions of realist theater and to explore the possibilities of metaand absurdist theater.

The cast and crew have also had the opportunity to shape both the structure and feel of the play, adding their own ideas to those of Brundige in order to develop a smoother more cohesive final product. For example, certain characters have been changed and the ending was recently rewritten to preserve the momentum of the scene.

Despite the number of complex ideas that the show presents, Bums and Monkeys has no pretensions. Its main goal is mostly to entertain rather than to convey a didactic set of themes or messages, Brundige said.

The zany humor of the show is reflected in the eclectic selection of background music, including a farcical song and dance number performed by a group of bums, as well as in the bright abstract yellow, purple and red sets that seem to recall a psychedelic circus.

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The costumes are also very upbeat and colorful, adding to the overall energy and variety of the show.

"The main theme of the costumes is bright colors, to match the circus like set and crazy style of the play," said Melissa Galvez '05 who, along with Adrienne Umeh '05 designed the costumes for the show.

"Though there are many characters in the play, David very specifically wanted each character to have a fully developed costume in order to make the world that Jennifer inhabits as vibrant as possible."

In the end, Bums and Monkeys is a fun, energetic play with a heavy dose of offbeat humor and originality, a play that promises to leave the audience laughing long after the last curtain call.

"It is really rare to have such an incredible project like this," Luse said. "Every moment someone is coming up with some great idea, something hysterical, some new way of doing something. This truly feels like a company, like a working ensemble. If you look up where 'Intime' comes from this is exactly what it is suppose to mean."