By Darryl Geddes
David Mamet's Oleanna, which opened yesterday at the Center for Theatre Arts for a near sold-out run through Feb. 10, may be required viewing for professor and student alike.
Mamet's taut drama addresses issues of the failure of communication, abuse of power and alleged sexual harassment on a college campus. A struggling female student, Carol, makes an unscheduled visit to her male professor, John, to seek his help in understand ing course materials. This seeming innocuous plea leads to a troubling scenario fraught with miscommunication that culminates in a startling accusation of attempted rape.
The play's audiences often leave the theater with an unwavering opinion of who is to blame in the drama's troubling conclusion. In the New York production, directed by the playwright, Mamet depicted the question of sexual harassment as irrational and un founded, prompting audiences to side with the scholar.
However, J. Ellen Gainor, associate professor of theater arts and director of the CTA production, maintains her take on the play is more evenhanded. "It's clear from having seen Mamet's own production that he had an agenda and worked very hard to push certain buttons so the audience would respond accordingly.
"The script struck me as being more gray than Mamet's version, which was very black and white," she explained in an interview last week. "Since this play was first pro duced, we've had more cases of this nature, and I want to show, through our production, that these kinds of situations are not always clear-cut. I want to make our audiences see the issues and see the potential for miscommunication. I have no intention of control ling the audiences' mind.
"There's an old adage in theater that playwrights should not direct their own scripts," Gainor said. "Oftentimes they can not remove themselves from it enough to see the strengths, liabilities or weaknesses
in their own writing. When other directors have a chance to approach these scripts, they bring to it things that come from a whole different background."
The fact that Oleanna is playing on a university campus to an audience composed almost exclusively of members of the academy has not put any added pressure on the production, said the cast and director.
"We're not setting this play at Cornell," Gainor asserted. "Nor does it portray any particular faculty member or event."
While some professors may see behavior or personality traits similar their own in John, Jens Martin Krummel said no Cornell professor was a model for his portrayal.
"It's something of a mystery to me how I build a character for the stage," said Krummel, whose stage credits include Macbeth , Measure for Measure and Hedda Gabler. "I'd say it's probably a combination of observation of others, looking deeply into myself, and into the character and circumstances in which he finds himself."
For sophomore anthropology major Sarah Megan Heller, portraying a student posed no great challenge, since she is one, but becoming such a sensitive character, like Carol, was difficult at first.
"I'm really not like her at all and that made getting into the part much more diffi cult," said Heller, who has also appeared in Measure for Measure and Lips Together, Teeth Apart, among other productions. "Carol is someone who is hurt by words. I normally don't allow words to hurt me."
Gainor hopes the production can bring about a greater exchange of ideas regarding the issues dramatized in Oleanna.
"If we can help people understand the nuances of these very difficult, upsetting and devastating situations, we can at least help them understand how the breakdown in com munication occurs; how people can act in a way so that people misunderstand them."
Two post-performance discussions with the actors and director will be held Wednes day, Feb. 7, and Friday, Feb. 9. For ticket information, call the box office at 254-ARTS.