By Jim Gilles
Opening on Thursday, July 7 at The Theatre of NOTE in Hollywood is a new play Clownfish, written by Amy Dellagiarino and directed by Laura Stribling. This amusing comedy about a wedding party takes place in a remote cabin resort in the mountains near Denver, Colorado, in the dead of winter. The bride-to-be has invited some of her old college friends to this remote location and they are being housed in several cabins at this curious mountain resort when a winter snowstorm leaves them feeling isolated in the middle of nowhere. Add to this the revelation that the cabin in which four of the wedding party are staying is supposedly haunted.
The play is largely focused around the central character of Erica (played by Susan Louise O’Connor), newly released from a mental hospital (for some undisclosed issue). Erica is trying to be a good bridesmaid but finds that everyone is treating her differently because of her “condition.”
The play opens with Erica and Cassie. Erica is busy trying to construct a funky wooden/ paper chandelier following directions in a guidebook prepared by the prospective bride and groom – a Wedding Planner Binder that was sent by email to the wedding party beforehand but also given out to the party at a morning breakfast meeting. Cassie (Jamila Webb) who attended the same college as Erica and the bride-to-be didn’t bother to show up for the breakfast meeting and seems uninterested in all the wedding details that were planned. Apparently, Cassie was too bored to stay and instead went out to get sunflower seeds and some marijuana-laced chocolates. The comic interplay between Cassie and Erica sets the tone of the play, as a very nervous Erica is bothered by Cassie’s constant munching on sunflower seeds and the fact that Cassie seems to have no particular assignment in the wedding preparation. Meanwhile Cassie, with her New Agey-Wavey mindset, keeps trying to convince Cassie that her “satchel” of crystals will keep her calm.
As a winter storm begins to rage outside the cabin, Cassie and Erica take verbal jabs at each other and recall how the bride-to-be was a real party girl in college and often drunk and like to play pranks on people. They talk about the strange wooden carving of a fish up on the cabin – which Erica sees as a “Clownfish” but Cassie insists that it is a trout and calls it “Troutie.” Then a young man (Joe Mahon) arrives at the cabin door and he tries to explain that he is to be the Best Man at the wedding. He is assigned to the same cabin as the two young women and immediately notices the Clownfish on the wall. Next to arrive is another young man named Todd (Sean Michael Boozer) who went to the same college as most of the others. He tells them he is there to help with any emergency medical needs, as he is certified in CPR. Todd is quite the talker and we soon learn that he may have once dated Cassie in college – and the friction between the two is quite apparent.
The real action begins when suddenly out of the winter storm the prospective groom Jake (Omari Williams) arrives, all in a huff because many of the wedding arrangements are not in sync. He had planned an unconventional and eccentric wedding, including a balloon arch, a marble run toy, the wooden chandelier, and the food which is still packed away in his car. Asked by the others why he chose this remote set of cabins high up on a mountain on a dangerous mountain road in the dead of winter, he tells them that it was a “bargain” – given the price. What he doesn’t mention is that the remote mountain resort is supposedly haunted.
Enter finally the loud, high-strung, half-inebriated bribe-to-be (Mara Shuster-Lefkowitz) who comes in out of the storm to dominate the scene and announce that she has the right to drink champagne ahead because “she is the bride.” Her husband-to-be had planned for it to be a “dry” wedding because some uncle is an alcoholic but that seems unimportant to his bride because (as it turns out) she has brought a bathtub load of champagne to the wedding and it is all in the cabin’s bathtub (off stage). Tipsy as she is, the bride-to-be manages to argue and insult most everyone there, including her husband-to-be who is mystified by her behavior. She insists that everyone knows that the mountain resort is haunted by ghosts and that there should never be six people in one cabin at the same time – for some ominous reason that we will come to understand later. Of sorts, this same fellow who claims to have expertise in CPR and most everything else tells the others that he is a professional “ghost hunter” – but later clarifies that it is only in the summer season.
With all six characters packed in the room, the attention turns to a missing member of the wedding party (Derek) who seems stranded down the mountain and unable to drive up the icy road. The husband-to-be talks to him on his cell phone and frets over what to do. Meanwhile the winter storm gets worse and his bride-to-be panics over the fact there are now six persons in the cabin and that this is a bad omen because of the history of haunting at the resort. She tries to leave but is unable to open the door. The snow drift has piled up against the door. Fortunately, a knock at the door reveals a 7th person ( Bill Voorhees), who is the guy from the front desk. He is carrying a snow shovel and managed to get inside. He joins the other six as strange things begin to happen and the lights flicker – either due the snow storm or some strange ghostly presence.
From here, the play moves in an interesting direction as the now seven people interact in their apparent “cabin fever,” digging at each other and, in turn, turning to drinking the champagne that has been squirreled away in the bathtub. They try various social games which quickly fizzle out as the ability to converse breaks down. They try to dance around the issue of Erica’s recent time in a mental hospital – mentioning it, only to pull back and then let Erica remind them that she is quite rational. It seems that all the characters have invented stories about themselves that they want to believe or project on others. Erica is trying so hard to act and feel “normal” in a world where she does not feel she belongs. She is quite annoyed with how the others treat her but she vocalizes her concerns to the others and we come to realize that the others are damaged in their own ways as well.
What about the ghost story? It’s there, as well. I leave you to see the play and discover how it is related to this strange wooden carving on the wall of a “Clownfish.” In some ways, Erica is the “Clownfish” because of her diminutive stature and slightly off-kilter personality, but she is also the most rational of the bunch in many ways. Clownfish is a dark comedy with a serious underbelly, as it forces us to think about social stigmas and the misguided desire to be “normal.”
Amy Dellagiarno is a playwright and screenwriter, originally a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, whose work has been produced across the country. Her play From the Perspective of a Canoe won the 2021 Stage Play Script Competition at the Austin Film Festival. Her play The Value of Moscow was nominated for a 2019 Stage Raw Award for Best Playwriting and was published through Stage Rights. Her comedy feature film Freelancers Anonymous won the 2018 NCGLFF Audience Award for Best Women’s Feature, was a recipient of the Frameline Completion Fund Award, and earned the Reframe Stamp for gender-balanced media along with such films as The Favourite, Can You Ever Forgive Me, and Crazy Rich Asians. Her short plays have garnered the Best Comedy award in various festivals.
Director Laura Stribling has directed more than one hundred productions, workshops, and readings. A product of Yale School of Drama, Laura has directed Henry IV, Part 1, Orpheus Descending, The Fattest Man in the World Lives Upstairs, Troy Woman, Oedipus, Hedda Gabler, Of Mice and Men, A Little Night Music, Footprints and The Last Nights of Scheherazade. The cast of Clownfish features Sean Michael Boozer, Joe Mahon, Susan Louise O’Connor, Mara Shuster-Lefkowitz, Bill Voorhees, Jamila Webb, and Omari Williams.
The Theatre of NOTE has finally returned to live in-person theatre with this World Premiere of Clownfish by Amy Dellagiarino. The play opened on Thursday July 7, and runs through Saturday, August 6 at The Theater of NOTE, located at 1517 N. Cahuenga Blvd (just north of Sunset) in Hollywood. Performances are Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7 pm. There will be an added performance on Monday, July 18, at 8 pm. Tickets are $25; students and seniors $20. Please visit www.theatreofnote.com to purchase tickets online and to view the complete schedule.
