Certain holiday staples remain constant despite changing times. Warm family gatherings. Shared meals made with love. And, in playwright Colman Domingo’s world, the dread of coming to terms with a family member’s declining cognitive health.
That’s the central thrust of “DOT,” which Blackfriars Theatre stages from Dec. 13-29. While other local theaters present traditional holiday fare throughout the month — “A Christmas Carol” at Geva, a touring “Grinch” musical via Rochester Broadway Theatre League — Blackfriars leans into the familiar aches (and comedy) that can arise when families reunite during Christmastime.
The play follows several adult children as they gather in the West Philadelphia home of their mother, Dotty. The matriarch’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis has compelled the eldest, Shelly, to make the case for her to receive full-time care. The thing is, it’s funny. Not always, but as is the case in any high-stress environment, humor becomes a powerful tool for cutting through the tension.
Director Eno Okung sees the comedy and gravity of the plot as twin vehicles that deliver the emotional score of the holiday season.
“People are wanting to think about the warm, fuzzy feelings that we get being around our families and the people that we love,” Okung said. “All of that is baked into this being a very challenging piece, but also a very inviting and welcoming piece.”
The comedy largely comes from the intimate, singular way that people who know each other so well can converse, often on top of each other. As the playwright offers in the author’s notes, “They’re the kind of people that speak before they think.”
Okung knows how to helm these characters. A teaching artist and self-described “comedy connoisseur,” they are also an experienced improviser in the local group Ants to God. In 2023, the trio even welcomed their own mothers to the stage in their own show, “Momfestation,” presented at Focus Theater.
Humor is just one aspect of “DOT,” often punctuated by stark silences and a smoldering undercurrent of drama. Okung sees the balance as a welcome challenge.
“Comedy is really difficult. A lot of (seasoned actors) are very intimidated by comedy because there is that nuance to it,” they said. “There are a lot of temperature changes that take place in this, too. So much is rooted in these people needing to be real people, not caricatures.”
Playwright Domingo published “DOT” in 2016 and based it on women he knew in their forties tasked with caring for their ailing mothers, as well as his own working-class upbringing. (A highlight early in the play finds Dotty likening Shelly, sporting a new hairdo, to “a mean pineapple.”) Domingo is best known for his onscreen film work, including as civil rights activist Bayard Rustin in Netflix’s “Rustin,” for which he received an Oscar nomination earlier this year.
Additionally, Domingo has penned the plays “A Boy and His Soul” and “Wild With Happy”; the Blackfriars team had previously considered producing both. When Brynn Tyszka applied to become Blackfriars’ newest artistic director in 2022, she assembled a hypothetical season of programs, selecting “DOT” for the holiday slot.
She got the job and took the helm in August of that year.
The Blackfriars selection committee of seven readers, which reads about 60 plays per year, reviewed “DOT” once Tyszka officially came aboard and, as she said, “everybody quickly fell in love with it.”
“It is just a beautiful family story that just about anybody can connect to,” Tyszka said, “although we do love the idea that it is a BIPOC show for a BIPOC audience.”
Tyszka said she saw Okung’s potential when they performed with Ants to God at the Blackfriars space — a tricky three-quarter thrust stage that juts out into the audience.
“I said, I’ve got to get this person in here working with us immediately. It was so clear,” Tyszka said. “That whole troupe, I have to say, really understood storytelling so well. All three of them could tell how to play the space, how to play different angles, to make sure that everybody was receiving what was happening on their faces and in their bodies.”
Blackfriars Executive Director Mary Tiballi Hoffman hopes the production of “DOT” represents what the theater can do well: stage lesser-known works rooted in difficult themes but present them with warmth and intimacy for audiences.
“(The show) is going to surprise them,” Hoffman said. “It’s going to make them think about their own lives and their own relationships.”
Okung, for their part, sees the task ahead as a labor of love — much like getting together for the holidays: “In an ideal world, this show will land in a place where we all feel like we’ve been home for a little bit.”
This article has been updated to reflect a casting change in Blackfriars Theatre’s production of “DOT,” which runs Dec. 13-29. More information here.
Patrick Hosken is an arts reporter for CITY. He can be reached at patrick@rochester-citynews.com.
This article appears in Nov 1-30, 2024.
