A woman grabs the last few things before setting off for the first day of her new job, ready to return to the workforce after having children. When she accidentally makes a deal with the devil, she is served hell in a handbasket.
Lamar University’s department of theatre and dance presents the world premiere of “The Self Destruction of Emma James,” written and directed by Kate Brennan, Feb. 13-16.
Brennan said she wrote the play in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic while raising a small child.
“Things were a bit crazy and hectic,” she said. “It’s a challenging time to bring a child into the world, but then it’s also challenging when you’re a mother and you want to return to the workforce. Those themes were starting to come up in my playwriting. I’ve gotten more interested in playing around with form and doing silly things and being bold.”
The main character, Emma James, is accidentally sent to a corporate hell.
“It’s not all fire and brimstone,” Brennan said. “It’s very tame and it’s sort of quirky and silly.”
Kiera Howington plays Emma, an anxious, hard-working person who puts everyone ahead of herself.
“I think during this show, she kind of gives into what she wants a little bit, but a little too much, and then has to face the consequences,” Howington said. “I personally don’t have children, but I do have twin younger brothers who are kind of my children in a way, because I love them like they’re my kids. But I think part of being able to play a mother is very much feeding into how I want to protect my brothers, and how that relates to a mother wanting to protect her own children.”
Nutella (Shelby Eason) is hell’s sarcastic, yet nosy secretary.
“She doesn’t enjoy the work that she’s doing, and she makes it known,” Eason said. “She says what she wants and does what she wants, but what she wants is not really what the narrative of the story wants. It’s hard to find ways to make an uninterested character interested in the story, and I’ve found that Nutella is just excited by excitement. Whenever something interesting is happening she’ll, peek over her phone and be like, ‘Oh, what’s going on over there?’”
As Emma adjusts to her new job, she is met with the personification of her inner thoughts, played by Juliana McManus.
“Anything that (Emma’s) thinking is what I say, and I kind of push her to do certain things,” McManus said. “It’s kind of like what you always want to say, but you have to bite your tongue. It’s so liberating to be able to do and say these things, and since I’m the inner monologue, they can’t see me.
“If I’m in an actor’s face and yelling, or if I’m about to jump on top of them, or whatever it is that I’m doing as inner Emma, they can’t look at me, they have no reaction. It’s so fun to just run around and just be wild and crazy and have no consequences for it. That’s the most fun part.”
Porter LaPray plays six characters with one of them being the devil.
“I truly think that most of my characters are pretty kind-hearted,” he said. “I think that’s something that comes through all of them, even though one of them is the devil.
“I feel like, in a way, I kind of encompass the male voices in Emma’s world and the good and the bad of that. Even in the kindness, there’s still kind of a tinge of stacking the odds against Emma. The devil might be the most important to Emma’s world in the show, but even that is not exactly true. But if you’re playing the devil, what people are gonna remember is that you played the devil.”
“The Self Destruction of Emma James” is a play for our time, Brennan said.
“Things are absurd, things feel untenable and overwhelming, and that’s what our characters go through,” she said. “But in the end, this ends up being a positive show and there’s a lot of people finding others in order to get through, and that could be a lesson for our own lives. When you’re going through hell, keep going.”
Showtimes are Feb. 13-15 at 7:30 p.m. and Feb. 16 at 2 p.m. in the Studio Theatre. For tickets, visit lamar.edu/lutdtix.