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‘The Wholehearted’ Takes Stage At La Jolla Playhouse

The Wholehearted
‘The Wholehearted’ Takes Stage At La Jolla Playhouse
‘The Wholehearted’ Takes Stage At La Jolla Playhouse GUESTS: Deborah Stein, writer/director, "The Wholehearted" Suli Holum, co-director/performer, "The Wholehearted"

Were listening to KPBS Midday Edition I am Allison see John. A new play open -- Allison St. John. A new plan -- play opens at the La Jolla Playhouse. To create a performance that tells the story of a female boxer. It's a tale about love violence and gender roles in the sport. It is written -- written by Deborah Stein and performed and codirected by Suli Holum. We have in studio with us Deborah Stein. You are also a teacher who teaches playwriting at the Department of heater and dance. And thank you for joining us Suli Holum. Deborah let's start with you. This play centers on the life of the fictional Bosque -- boxer. Talk about the origins of this play. The origins began with my long-term creative relationship with Suli. We made place together since college. We finished our first solo piece since 2010 and we started talking about women in sports and violence and there were a lot of stories in the news at the time about women who got revenge or murder their partners. We look for things that get us thinking. There's no reason for us to make a play if there's a healthy argument we can create something. Let's get a little bit of the story line. You will meet the character Dee Crosby. She was a championship boxer the most successful female boxer of her time. Your meeting her and she has training for what she calls they come back. What has happened to her is that at the height of her fame and power and success her husband and Traer -- trainer beat her and stabbed her and shot her and left her for dead she survived and is trying to get back into fighting shape. She's harbored a long-term love for a woman named Carmen who was her high school girlfriend and she is making a love letter videotape for Carmen explaining why she left her behind when she was 17. Everything that has happened in the intervening 20 years and that she's going to come home but first she has to take care of a couple of things because this is the day her ex-husband is getting out of jail. And this is a musical. How did he manage to blend those together? The way that we work as Phil -- full of experiment we collaborate as a team of -- designers and musicians. What I think what is everyone on our team interested in doing. We tried to fold as many of those passions into the work as we can and it results in the work that is multilayered as that impulses. Do you have any connection with boxers? Why did you choose that? I guess it is a metaphor for feminine power. It's a problematic one. If it's not okay for people to be each other up in the living room why it is okay for us to watch for my living room while they do it on TV? And as we were developing soon that revealed itself to us is the question of nonviolent privilege. Some people do not have the choice. We wanted to push at the edges of that. I had no experience of boxing four years ago when we started making this piece but I have been training for four years and I have developed a passion and a real respect for the art in the sport of boxing and I would say my relationship to boxing has gotten more complicated than it was when I started. Can you give us a taste of the character by giving us some of her lines. I'm going to be someone. I'm going to be one hell of a set -- down someone. You have a lot of grit in there but you are really up against it. You also slip into some other characters other than deep. Ideal. Carmen -- you are all angles and edges cornered in crouching on ledges. And Charlie. She's a beautiful girl on softness in my. All bark no bite. That's what she's like. That is these husband. There's quite a lot of stuff going on simultaneously -- simultaneously. As they are performing on the stage there are some high-tech screens. Tell us about how you get the message across. We are borrowing the video and technology ideas from sports television. We have Jumbotron's on stage it is staged in a boxing ring are around like a boxing ring and there are large televisions and there's a live camera operator. It's a solo but it's also a duet between student -- Suli and our camera operator. He comes in at certain key moments of the story and films soleus performance and it appears on this live Jumbotron and through tricks of light what you see on the Jumbotron is an idealized movie version of her life as she is telling the story to Carmen and in her head it's a dramatic and epic love story of the ages. What we think of ourselves as theater makers is give you the gift of the movie and what we are seeing on stage is how they are crafting the and they are in this dingy background because it's not safe for her to go home. What you see at any time they have a choice because he can watch what is happening on the Jumbotron or what is happening on staff. Sometimes when they are not on stage Dee Crosby is recording this love letter so she's confessing things and ripping her heart out. You see the selfie video on the screen that life came about through a really intense long-term coordination. They came to the process they wanted to work with live cameras on stage and what's the reason that comes from story and character weather would be live cameras and video on stage. With the was somebody is making a selfie video. That is I will be interact with cameras every day of our lives. How do you want the audience to leave feeling about her. Want them to be asking a lot of questions. The play does not teach a lesson asks a lot of really difficult questions about violence and how that lives in American lives. Particularly in gender dynamics. Our favorite experiences when they don't agree what she should do at the end of the play where they sit in the audience and says I really hope she does ask. And the other person says I don't know. It's an open ended story. We want the audience to be having it -- this conversation. We have come to the end of our time. We've been talking about the wholehearted which runs through Sunday. It sounds like a very interesting process and I'm sure there is -- result will be amazing. Deborah Stein is the director and Suli Holum is the performer in this solo performance.

A new one-woman show at the La Jolla Playhouse mixes theater, boxing, musical and video elements into one production.

"The Wholehearted" tells the story of a world champion female boxer, Dee Crosby, who is training for a comeback in the ring after being brutally attacked by her own husband.

“The Wholehearted” is about love, women in sports and violence. It opens Wednesday at The Playhouse and runs through Dec. 18.

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The play is staged like a boxing ring and uses large projection screens to blur the lines between fantasy and reality.

Deborah Stein, a playwriting professor at UC San Diego wrote and co-directed the production with Suli Holum who plays protagonist Crosby.

Holum and Stein discuss the inspiration behind the production Wednesday on Midday Edition.