"HeLa" at TheatreFIRST

There is almost too much to say about this play and this production. I saw it two days ago, and I still have a lot of thoughts bouncing around in my head about it, but I really want to get it written down because there are only three more performances of this play, coming up this weekend, and I suspect some of you might want to see it.

HeLa is the fourth and final production of the premiere season of the new incarnation of TheatreFIRST, so it provides a chance to look at where they've come as a company this year, as well as looking at a very interesting play.

The Play

Inspired by the story of Henrietta Lacks, Bay Area playwrights Lauren Gunderson and Geetha Reddy have produced what they call "The PoeticScientific DreamFate of Henrietta Lacks," which goes a long way toward explaining the somewhat odd narrative structure of the piece. Time and reality are both quite fluid in this play, from the outset.

The opening scene has the young mother Henrietta washing dishes while her 2-year-old daughter, Deborah, tries to avoid going to bed. It's a pretty simple domestic scene, except Deborah is narrating it from sometime in the future, looking back to an early event that she probably can't even remember. Henrietta is soon joined by her adoring husband, and they talk about things: their five children, their life. It's a simple image of a loving family life. But soon we are interrupted by Henrietta learning that she has advanced cervical cancer, and the doctor is not encouraging, rather mechanically telling her that she is going to die, though they will do what they can.

That's pretty much the last even remotely sympathetic interaction Henrietta will have with the medical establishment. Her treatment is ineffective, but painful (as is the cancer, of course). In the course of her dying in the hospital, researchers will routinely take samples of her cancerous tissues. It's routine (for them), but the cells are not. It turns out Henrietta has really special cancer cells that are, essentially, immortal. This is a great boon for researchers, for all kinds of reasons alluded to in the course of the play.

Henrietta dies, but her cancer cells live on in laboratories around the world, becoming the most popular cells for scientific research ever. The thing is, they are identified only as "HeLa," so soon no one remembers or knows who the cells came from.

Through the rest of the play, "Henrietta" follows those cells through various kinds of research projects, such as Jonas Salk developing his polio vaccine, early space flight, and much more. Some of the scenes are quite humorous, others touching, some irritating or inflammatory. And through it all we see and hear Henrietta's frustration that she is unknown and unacknowledged, and bitter that people are making loads and loads of money off her cells, while she (obviously) and her family get no payment or benefit at all.

So we have a number of themes here: identity and recognition through time; the rights of patients and (perhaps) their survivors vis-a-vis material taken from the body of the patient (with or without consent or, perhaps, knowledge); the attitudes of medical practitioners and researchers toward patients and subjects; consent and coercion in general. All important. But the "elephant in the room" here is race. Because Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman of modest means, and virtually everyone else involved (doctors, researchers, etc.) are white and mostly male.

The Production

The narrative is a bit difficult to comprehend, particularly early, as characters morph almost instantaneously, so one isn't quite sure whether the actor speaking is still the same character as last spoke. On some level, I suspect that is intentional, that the point is they are all in some ways the same, so we are feeling some of the discomfort and confusion that Henrietta and her family feel. On another hand, from a historical perspective it actually makes a difference whether everyone treats Henrietta badly, or only some people do. But that doesn't seem to be a concern of the play.

Anyway, the three core members of the Lacks family, Henrietta, her husband, and her daughter Deborah (played respectively by Jeunee Simon, Khary Moye, and Desiree Rogers) are all solid. The rest of the ensemble are also good. Sarah Mitchell has a couple of memorable turns, particularly as a canine cosmonaut. Richard Pallaziol drew the short straw and gets to portray all of the white, male medical personnel, so spends much of the play being smarmy, condescending, and/or dismissive. Akemi Okamura gets a couple of chances to be the conscience of the medical crew, but those bits are fleeting.

The staging is intentionally simple. It's all set on an empty, black stage, with occasional props brought in. Throughout, the back wall is illuminated by a sort of sculpture made up of translucent balls, illuminated in various effective ways (kudos to lighting designer Stephanie Anne Johnson), always looking like a bunch of cells, which is really the center of the story.

My main criticism of the production is that it's pretty single-note. Admittedly, the source material is pretty sparse, but instead of filling in with a variety of different kinds of scenes and reactions, we pretty much get Henrietta feeling forgotten and unacknowledged n every context. While it may be true that she was essentially instantly forgotten by all but her family, that doesn't leave much room for plot and character development. So by the time we've seen 20 or 30 minutes of the play, we've gotten pretty much the whole message. There's a little more toward the end when some of the family is drawn back in, but on the whole, we've got the story almost complete early on.

The TheaterFIRST Experiment

When TheatreFIRST re-formed last year, their stated mission was to use storytelling to amplify marginalized voices and give a larger community a larger voice. But they also talk about "telling the world’s stories through multiple, simultaneous viewpoints," and that seems to be missing in HeLa. We get Henrietta's viewpoint throughout, and no one could dispute that hers, as with so many of her contemporaries, was a marginalized voice. It's great to have her story told from her perspective.

Unfortunately, that telling doesn't feel like it's fair to some of the other actors in the story. Most of the medical professionals come across more as caricatures than as characters. The researcher who orders his assistant to obtain more samples, even though it will cause even more pain to the dying woman, flat out says he doesn't care, that he needs those cells for his research. He's not quite twisting his mustache and cackling, but it almost comes across that way. There is little sense that anyone gives more than lip service to balancing the question of the individual patient/subject and the possible good the research might provide to society as a whole. It would possible to portray Henrietta as being wronged without having to portray everyone who wrongs her as being greedy, egotistical, racist and heartless. A bit more subtlety to the message would make this a better and more broadly accessible play. At least two people in my party found this portrayal to be extremely off-putting, even offensive.

That said, the play clearly resonates with a big swath of the audience. And I have to say that the audience for the Sunday matinee we saw had far more people of color in it than I generally see at any theater, and judging superficially I'd say the audience was probably less affluent than is the norm. And during the play I saw many of them nodding in agreement and recognition of circumstances, some even vocalizing during the play. And that's all great: these are people who rarely get to see people like them portrayed on stage. I'm elated to see them coming to hear stories they can relate to. But there is also an opportunity to at least introduce other viewpoints as well, to create a dialogue, and that's what was missing.

At the discussion following the performance, nearly all of the "questions" from the audience were really just thanks and praise. Which is fine as far as it goes, but that's the prescription for an echo chamber. In part I attribute the lack of interaction to the fact that many in the audience are not accustomed to attending theater, much less discussing with the cast afterward. But telling a story that doesn't result in people wanting to dispute or question or add on or something suggests that the story is too finely tuned to a particular audience. Getting new people into the theater is a good first step. Really engaging them, though, is what really defines art, and HeLa isn't there yet.

One thing that struck me in the discussion after was a comment by one of the cast that there was a lot more material written than was included in the show. They picked and chose scenes that they felt worked best. It would be interesting to know whether some of the other scenes might have provided some contrast or variety of viewpoint, which would have made the show overall stronger. Hard to know without knowing what those scenes are, of course.

Bottom Line

The play tells an interesting, if limited, story, and the production is of remarkably high quality for a world premiere that is really still in development. And it's enlightening for a frequent theater attendee like me to get immersed in a very different sort of audience now and then. It's good to see how they react and what they react to. Every theater person I talk to is always talking about how to expand the base of people who go to theater. TheatreFIRST seems to have found at least one part of an answer. The next question is, how do you get them to come back for another story that might not be so finely tuned to them.

I'm glad to see that such a new and rather radically different theater company has been as successful as they have been in their inaugural season. I look forward to seeing both their productions and their audience develop.

Should you see HeLa? Probably. There are lots of good theatrical bits, even if I don't find the overall story that compelling. But it's good to see how it is reaching some people quite effectively. Seeing this has definitely got me thinking about some new things, and that's always good.