The Year in Theater: A Punk-Rock Play at BPT
Melinda Lopez’s Gary sets family strife to music
This year, Boston University’s actors, directors, and playwrights brought an exciting year of theater to campus. From the Opera Institute’s production of The Magic Flute to the week-long InCite Arts Festival produced by the College of Fine Arts, the performances showcased a wide array of BU talent. This week, BU Today is revisiting the year in theater at Boston University.
A Punk-Rock Play at BPT
During her youth in suburban Bedford, Mass., in the late 1970s, playwright Melinda Lopez (GRS’00), felt stifled, like she didn’t belong. The popular music of that time was polished, and, to her, represented conformity. “It seemed like if you turned on the radio,” says Lopez, “everything you heard was the same.” But when WBCN, a Boston radio station, started playing local bands such as Mission of Burma, Lyres, Willie Alexander & the Boom Boom Band, and La Peste — who, according to Lopez “talked about things that meant something” — she found hope. “It finally felt like something was happening,” she says.
Gary, Lopez’s new play at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, pairs the music and atmosphere of the era with a dark story about a dysfunctional family dealing with incest and rape. Lopez worked with a punk composer to create an original soundtrack for the play, and the actors were trained to play instruments. The characters deal with tragedy, Lopez says, and music is their conduit for change. “You can create something beautiful out of trash, out of the train wreck that your life is,” she says, “and that’s what [my character] does. He turns all of that into music.”
Robin Berghaus can be reached at berghaus@bu.edu.
Thumbnail photo by Michael Block
This story originally ran March 5, 2008.
Comments & Discussion
Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.