Princetonian's play starts stint off-Broadway

"That's a healthy way to go through life. Schedule your tension in advance," a character declares early in Tristine Skyler '93's off-Broadway play "The Moonlight Room." His statement becomes an appropriately derisive response to the events that unfold both in the play itself and in the characters' lives in general. No one can schedule the daily circumstances that arise, the conflicts they inflict or the lessons they force us to learn.

The play opens immediately following such an unexpected turn of events — two 16-year-olds, Sal (Laura Breckenridge '06) and Josh (Brendan Sexton III), anxiously sit in a hospital waiting room as their friend is treated for a drug overdose. At first, they try to ease the pressure of uncertainty by conversing abstractedly about everything from over-sized peanut butter jars to the difference between "The Enquirer" and "The Star." But suggestions of larger issues lurk in these mundane topics. We learn of the affection of Sal for Josh, who seems oblivious to how her eyes glaze over when he mentions other girls. We discover how restrained Sal feels by her mother's protectiveness and wonder why Josh offers little about his own situation at home. We also repeatedly encounter the prevalence of drugs in both characters' lives, even if this becomes apparent only through witticisms and arguments over whether marijuana is a drug or a pastime.

These concerns are explored and augmented as the play progresses and as older characters such as Sal's mother and the hospitalized boy's father are introduced. And although conclusions are reached, none of them are finite. Ambiguities leave the audience as uncertain as the characters themselves, which is an effective device to remind us that nothing in life ever has that promised but elusive happy ending. Time complicates more often than it comforts; when Sal's mother declares, "There's been a slow and steady progression for the worse," she could be speaking about anything.

"The Moonlight Room" is Skyler's first play, though it hardly seems so from the authenticity of her characters and the natural ease of her dialogue. Skyler was working on an adaptation of a collection of short stories by Princeton Creative Writing Professor Joyce Carol Oates when she developed the concept of the play.

"The adaptation was set in the waiting room of a bus station, and it revolved around the lives of people in transition, people at a crossroads in their lives," Skyler said. "I wanted to recreate that in a place where the stakes were raised."

With influences ranging from Edward Albee to Kenneth Lonergan, she set out to create characters who were already "waiting to come out." She based them on people she knew, people she knew of and her own experiences growing up in New York. The resulting play enjoyed a "convergence of events" when Skyler found the director, Jeff Cohen and the actors who would adapt her words to the stage.

Breckenridge, who is on leave from Princeton for a year, was part of this fortunate series of events. She met Skyler through a mutual friend even before auditioning for the show. After being cast, she worked with Skyler to develop the character of Sal, a process that involved creating a specific background and experimenting with a number of different approaches to the text.

"Sal and I are very different, but I understood her confusion. I understood her being in love with a boy who will never wake up. Her experiences are basic and relatable, but at the same time they are unique. She is awakened by everything that happens around her," Breckenridge said.

Breckenridge was herself awakened by the process of putting on "The Moonlight Room." Already a theatre veteran at the age of 20 — she performed in "The Crucible" on Broadway and in "Melancholy Play" and with BodyHype at Princeton — she has, nonetheless, had a number of new experiences during the course of the show. To prepare for the role, she visited hospital rooms, cut her hair and started wearing baggy pants and sneakers instead of skirts and heels.

"The most difficult part psychologically was finding that insecure place inside. Even though she lets loose with Josh, at the bottom Sal is loaded with fear."

Once performances began, all the preparation paid off.

"I love going to work. Each performance lives. You can't really repeat anything that happens onstage even though you repeat the words."

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That transience makes live theatre exciting for the audience, too. Each confrontation between characters vanishes even as we witness it, while each revelation has already become part of a character's self-discovery by the time he speaks. The temporality of life characterizes the events of "The Moonlight Room," but at the same time, those events remain in our thoughts long after the curtain call, a sure sign that Skyler's play will also be around for a while.