By Isaac Hamlet
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Actors sometimes spend years honing the specificity with which they embody a single character. A more challenging task is to perfect more than 50 characters, all appearing in a single stage show.
The cast of Shipwrecked! talks about the origin of the plays story as well as the simplicity of the set. (Audio compiled by Isaac Hamlet & edited by Lily Abromeit)
At 7:30 p.m. Friday at Riverside Theater, 213 N. Gilbert St., actors Paul Riopelle, Katherine Slaven, and Joe Osheroff will perform Shipwrecked!
“An important thing for people to know is that this is a true story,” Riopelle said. “There was a real guy named Louis de Rougemont. He claimed to have been shipwrecked on a desert island, to have watched a fellow crew member get swallowed by an octopus, to have ridden giant sea turtles, and to have lived among cannibals for 30 years, among other adventures.”
After the stories of Rougemont (born Henri Louis Grin in Switzerland in 1847) garnered public attention, the public found out he had falsified the adventures, but that was after his stories had been read by thousands.
“I think Louis was a figure a lot like Donald Trump is today,” Riopelle said. “Whether you think that Trump has a great new vision for this country or that he’s full of baloney, you can’t ignore him. And that’s the kind of figure Louis is. Whether he was telling the truth or whether he was lying through his teeth, it didn’t really matter, because people loved it.”
In Shipwrecked!, Rougemont — played by Riopelle — spends half his stage time narrating his adventures to the audience. The other portion is spent interacting with Osheroff and Slaven as they help re-enact his stories.
“This is a three-person ensemble telling the story of one man and 100 cohorts,” Osheroff said.
The other two take on roughly 80 roles between them over the course of 90 minutes. In one moment, Slaven portrays Rougemont’s love interest; in the next, she takes on the role of his mother.
“All of the sound effects are done on stage, in front of the audience, at a Foley table — which is a collection of everyday objects we use to create all the audio effects in the show — wind, rain, thunder, waves … you name it,” Riopelle said.
The props on stage are meant to look pulled from the back of a theater. Three trunks, a broom, and blanket are some of the objects repurposed for various situations.
“It’s evocative of children playing in an attic and just making their own world out of what’s available,” Slaven said. “Everything’s in full view of the audience, they get a real behind-the-scenes look at how we do everything. There are no secrets in this play.”
Despite its conceptual simplicity, Riopelle and his fellow cast members liken the show to “a Swiss clock.” Having to juggle characters, costume changes, and practical sound effects is demanding. As Osheroff puts it, “everything we do has to complement the action on stage.”
“All of us are doing this marathon,” Slaven said. “It’s very physical, and it’s incredibly intense. This is an epic story told onstage with three people, and to make it work takes a lot out of you.”
Production Director Sam Osheroff is kicking off his tenure as Riverside’s artistic director. Changes for the theater include an increased social-media presence and $12 tickets for students on Thursdays.
“I wanted to do a family-friendly show that worked just as well as adults as it did for kids,” he said. “Not some dysfunctional family working out their problems but something that college students could go to and enjoy.”
Sam Osheroff noted that the open-ended script conveys things in an interesting way. Grand occurrences occur, and few hints are given as to how to execute them.
“For almost everything, we came up with five different ways of doing it, and almost every time, the best answer ended up being the simplest,” he said. “Every page was a surprise, and each week, we see the play getting more and more refined and focused.”
Donald Margulies, the playwright, conceived the play with children in mind. As he wrote, though, the play became more sophisticated than he’d intended, but it never lost its kid-friendly core.
“The play works on two different levels,” Riopelle said. “The first is just the sheer creativity and imagination of it. But underneath the spectacle, it’s also a very sweet, compelling, earnest story that’s going to appeal to the adults in the audience, too. It’s really a great show for families and people of all ages — and that’s pretty rare.”
On its more adult level, the show asks audiences how they consume their media and what they perceive as truth.
“It has a really amazing commentary on how we view celebrity and how we view truth and what’s being reported,” Joe Osheroff said. “The fact that the playwright took this story that takes places at the cusp of the Industrial Revolution and makes it completely applicable, morally, now to what’s happening in the digital revolution is pretty cool.”
The play concerns truth — both the truth of the story spread before the audience and the truth of the action on stage, which exposes the cogs of theater as the cast creates an experience the audience can examine every aspect of.
“We’re not invested in tricking anybody; we’re invested in sharing this storytelling style with you,” Joe Osheroff said. “We’re not trying to pull the wool over your eyes with a falling chandelier or a turntable on the stage; we’re trying to show you what we can do with these things.”
Event: Shipwrecked!
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday & 3 p.m. Sept. 27
Where: Riverside Theater, 213 N. Gilbert
Admission: $10-$30