Things to Do in Miami: “American Rhapsody” at Adrienne Arsht Center January 12-29, 2023

Since writing his first produced play, 1996’s That Sound You Hear, Michael McKeever has turn into a author with a notably eclectic vary and a prodigious drive.

In these 27 years, the South Florida playwright has written 35 full-length comedies and dramas produced all through the area, the nation (off-Broadway included), and in different nations. His topics have included hate crimes, a hurricane, bullying, Hollywood secrets and techniques, artists, homosexual marriage, grief, hoarding, numerous Miami — effectively, you get the thought.

This week, McKeever prepares to debut his thirty sixth full-length movie. American Rhapsody was written for Sarasota’s Florida Studio Theatre as a fee throughout the pandemic, however it can get its world premiere Thursday, January 12, by Sunday, January 29, at Zoetic Stage, an organization McKeever cofounded, and shall be staged by inventive director Stuart Meltzer. The play previews Thursday, January 12, and opens Friday, January 13, within the Carnival Studio Theater on the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.

American Rhapsody — the “rhapsody” refers to an epic poem, not a chunk of music — is a play that weds the private to impactful occasions and societal shifts.

It begins in 1969, because the Cabot household of Lawrence, Kansas, huddles round their tv set to look at grainy video of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touchdown on the moon. It ends in 2032, in a rustic without end evolving, an America and an prolonged household vastly modified.

“Sixty years is quite a lot of play,” says McKeever, who sports activities a T-shirt that reads “Write On” throughout a Zoom interview. “Stuart is conserving every thing fantastically clear, so lively and transferring… Few individuals know my work higher than Stuart; he is aware of my writing. He’s enormously insightful.”

That Meltzer connects so completely with McKeever’s work is not any shock. Winners of a number of Carbonell Awards, Meltzer can be one in every of Zoetic’s 5 cofounders (Christopher Demos-Brown, Stephanie Demos-Brown, and Kerry C. Shiller are the others.) Meltzer and McKeever have labored collectively on a number of Zoetic exhibits, together with the corporate’s first, South Beach Babylon, in 2010 and written by McKeever. Together for twenty years and married since 2017, the artists’ lives are creatively and personally enmeshed; it was throughout a cross-country driving trip with Meltzer that McKeever hit on Kansas and its utter flatness as the situation for American Rhapsody.

McKeever acknowledges the autobiographical underpinnings of his new play, although the focal character Franky Cabot is a poet, not a playwright. Meltzer says that originally, the play was supposed to be “a reexamination of the beaten-up American dream from a household’s perspective.”

As the script has advanced, the director says, “we have found out a technique to join the milestones in a single man’s life with the artwork of creation. You get household, occasions, and the artwork of writing multi functional play.”

McKeever consists of 4 generations of Cabots: patriarch Franklin “Papa Frank” Cabot (Steve Trovillion), a distinguished jurist; his son “Big Frank” (Aloysius Gigl) and daughter-in-law Eleanor (Laura Turnbull); the couple’s offspring, Jenny (Lindsey Corey) and Franky (Alex Weisman); and Jenny’s daughter Maddie (Stephanie Vazquez). Jenny’s husband, Albert Bernal (Carlos Alayeto); household good friend, Nat Morris (Lela Elam); and 6 different characters additionally determine into the sweeping but intimate story.

Weisman, who grew up in Davie and commenced appearing in South Florida as a baby, grew to become an in-demand Chicago actor after graduating from Northwestern University (he acquired one of the best supporting actor Joseph Jefferson Award for The History Boys), increasing his profession to movie, tv (he performs the LGBTQ+ character Frank on Sesame Street) and Broadway (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child).

He has seen loads of McKeever’s work and was a part of a one-night Zoom studying of Daniel’s Husband, the author’s play about homosexual marriage, from his New York condo throughout the pandemic. When he learn American Rhapsody, Weisman says, “I fell in love with it. It jogged my memory of Michael Cunningham’s Flesh and Blood in its scope, its storytelling, and the Americana in it.”

Weisman additionally relished the thought of originating the advanced position of Franky, “this queer determine who would not need to be harmless and likable and humorous on a regular basis. He has allowed me to be flawed, even nasty. So many instances once we play these characters, now we have the shimmer of a halo round us. I respect how sad this character is.”

Meltzer argues that Franky is nearer in spirit to him than to McKeever.

“Franky has the alternative qualities of Michael. His is extra of a Peer Gynt story: You work so arduous that you simply lose your self to search out your self,” the director says.

Weisman, now 35, says he has appeared as much as McKeever since he was 10 and that the playwright influenced his choice to turn into an artist. Other than the pandemic studying of Daniel’s Husband (impressed by McKeever-Meltzer debates on homosexual marriage), he hadn’t labored with the director on a full manufacturing, and he is discovering the expertise totally different and exhilarating.

“Stuart is extremely impulsive. Every second feels such as you’re strolling by {an electrical} area, and while you put all of it collectively, it is like fireworks,” the actor says. “I do not work that method. I’m very in my head and return to those cerebral impulses.”

Playing the Colombian-American Albert, Alayeto can be new to Zoetic, McKeever, and Meltzer. The son of Cuban mother and father who got here to Miami in 1961, he relishes having the ability to originate the position of a husband and father with post-traumatic stress dysfunction and, like his character, has a spouse who travels for work, a daughter, and an in depth relationship along with his mother-in-law.

“It’s wonderful how effectively Michael goes by the historical past. It’s very a lot a household play that does not get slowed down,” he observes. “I’m very impressed along with his rhythm and the melody of his prose. Stuart could be very, very particular. I’m amazed at his consideration to element. He gives stable anchor factors to attach with, and nothing feels arbitrary.”

Corey, who performs Albert’s driven-lawyer spouse Jenny, and Elam, whose black lesbian bartender character Nat turns into an in depth good friend to a number of Cabots, are each members of Zoetic’s prolonged inventive household. Both have been in a number of productions executed by the corporate, and each discover this McKeever play particularly resonant.

“This play, specifically, is relatable to everybody: to individuals affected by 9/11, the feminist motion, the Black Lives Matter motion, the American expertise, the feminine expertise, the homosexual expertise, the human expertise,” says Corey. “The first time I learn the play, I fell in love with Jenny. She has a ‘blue hearth’ in her coronary heart like Papa Frank did. I additionally really feel that fireplace in me.”

Elam, who originated roles in McKeever’s Moscow and Clark Gable Slept Here at Zoetic, says it is an “honor and a privilege” to be taking part in characters written along with her in thoughts.

“I can relate to Nat in so some ways. She’s homosexual, she’s Black. Nothing she says is overseas to me,” Elam says. “Alex and I shared issues about our private lives. We play finest associates, and we simply clicked. He’s like so a lot of my homosexual homeboys.”

American Rhapsody is a reminiscence play, a piece of creativeness grounded in McKeever’s experiences and perceptions of the world. His Cabot household offers with loss and pleasure, tragedy and triumph, little choices and life-changing ones. The play is suffused with heat and humor, in addition to ache.

Alayeto believes that, even with the challenges the household and the nation endure, the takeaway is a perspective that may profit anybody.

“This paints a hopeful image of America, which we sorely want. This is a rustic of optimism and hope. We could make this the land of the potential,” he says. “I feel it is a play audiences want.”

– Christine Dolen, ArtburstMiami.com

American Rhapsody. Thursday, January 12, by Sunday, January 29, on the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami; 305-949-6722; arshtcenter.org. Tickets price $55 to $60.