PMA Alum L M Feldman’s new play Another Kind of Silence premiered at Pittsburgh’s City Theatre this fall. As part of its National New Play Rolling World Premiere, the play will also be staged at Denver’s Curious Theatre Company in March, and THE VORTEX in Austin in May. During its premiere, the play received a glowing writeup by Emma Diehl for American Theatre magazine.
Another Kind of Silence tells the story of Evan & Chap – 2 already-partnered queer women who cross paths in modern-day Greece and find themselves falling in love. Through a landscape lush with language, myth, humor, and intimacy, we watch as their affected partnerships navigate the elusiveness of desire, the failures of communication, the challenges of long-term commitment, and the mysteries of a changing self. Bilingual & bicultural, ANOTHER KIND OF SILENCE unfolds simultaneously in English & American Sign Language (ASL) as the 4 characters & their 4 souls (a Greek Chorus) traverse one of the hardest chapters in committed relationships.
“I started writing the first iteration of Another Kind of Silence during my second year of grad school, waaaaaayback when I was still in mid 20s,” said Feldman. “Nearly a decade later, a colleague asked me if they could work on it. When I pulled it out of the metaphorical drawer, I realized that all the major life and love and partnership questions I had been asking in the first version of the play had, by now, drastically evolved. While I still wanted to tell the story of the play’s four characters, the play itself now needed a heart-transplant – because all the hard raw gnarled tender questions at the core of the original story had to change, now that I had. So, I not just rewrote, but, like, gutted and reenvisioned a whole new version of the play. That re-souled version is the one that we just premiered at City Theatre, with support from the National New Play Network and the Venturous Playwright Fellowship at the Playwrights' Center – cuz the play is a pretty massive theatrical venture.
“Now in my mid 40s, my experiences continue to evolve, of course, and I find myself surprised that (over the past 20 years) my romantic life has at some point aligned with each character. This play has witnessed me through multiple relationships, break-ups, solitudes, and commitments. And my loyalty to different characters seems to shift each time.
“This play’s bilingualism, biculturalism, and theatrical dramaturgy is the result of over 70 different collaborators, over the past 20 years, from actors to directors to lit managers to dramaturgs to audience members to consultants to DASLs (directors of artistic sign language) to fellow playwrights, and more. And the play is still evolving even now – and will continue to, collaboratively – over the course of its three-city Rolling World Premiere.
“Quite frankly, I’m astounded, daunted, and (overwhelmingly) grateful to be part of bringing this piece to life. I had given up hope that it would ever live and breathe and (most importantly) move. It's an epically visual, spatial, and physical play. Off and on over the past two decades, I’ve changed the play as I’ve changed within my life… and now I’m so curious and humbled to see how the play will change me as it changes in ITS OWN life.”
Read more about City Theatre’s production of Another Kind of Silence
Read the review of the play in American Theatre
Read more about the National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere
Read more about L M Feldman
