[Audio from “Come to the Fun Home” from Fun Home]
The musical Fun Home starts not with an overture but with a drawing desk and a cardboard box. It’s not a typical way to open, but Fun Home is not a typical musical.
Porchlight Music Theatre’s current production of the 2015 Best Musical Tony Winner preserves the intimate nature of the show with its gorgeous music and heartwarming and wrenching book, all based on Alison Bechdel’s 2006 family tragicomic of the same name.
Alanna Chavez: The premise of the show is we meet the lesbian cartoonist, Alison Bechtel in the year 2006 when she is starting to begin to write her graphic novel memoir. Alison herself is 43 years old and she looks back at herself when she’s about 10, and then again about 19 when she sort of has these big revelations and realizations about her life.
That’s actress Alanna Chavez who plays the role of Alison, who as mentioned is one of the three versions of the character in the show. To Chavez, Fun Home is a show about many things, one of which is queerness.
Chavez: When she’s 19 she sort of comes to this big realization like, oh yeah, I am a lesbian. As often happens with coming out stories, they often turn into coming to terms stories, where she has to sort of come to terms with her life and how her queerness affects her family and then in turn, how their queerness affects her as well.
It’s these bold and important types of stories that Porchlight has been telling for years and wanted to recenter, which is how they ended up selecting the show and bringing on director Stephen Schellhardt.
Stephen Schellhardt (Shell-hart): It’s such a beautiful story. I am a father. I am a gay man who had his own journey with coming out and coming to terms with living authentically and, um, I think about my relationship with my daughter and the communication I have with the people I love and the time I spend with them and do I really, do we ever really know the people closest to us. I was eager to kind of see what my point of view was and come at it from a director’s point of view.
But this wasn’t Schellhardt’s only point of view with the show. In 2022, he played Bruce, Alison’s father, in a production of Fun Home at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora. However, this new point of view provided Schellhardt with a new angle and new discoveries in his return to the show.
Schellhardt: When I was acting, I was thinking about his specific journey. And when I came to the table as a director, I was really intrigued by the show’s portrayal of courage. What it means to have the courage to live authentically. Because I think the stories need to be told. So for me, I came to the table really thinking. Okay, I want to focus the story on how we, how we excavate our memories, our past, how we come to terms with our past in order to move on to our, with our future and how we can have the courage to be who we are, to say who we love and to love ourselves.
To Schellhardt, it’s more than just your run of the mill musical, it’s a story that breaks the norms in so many ways.
Schellhardt: This is a memory play. It’s non linear. Memory is kind of like a junkyard of these boxes we place, experiences and and and things until we’re ready to look back on them.
So how do you tackle a show that spans time and memory like Fun Home? Scenic Designer Jonathan Berg-Einhorn’s process started at the micro level.
Jonathan Berg-Einhorn: I started with a line that Alison says in the first song of the show that she takes real objects because she has trouble drawing things from memory. So the whole idea of memory and tangibility to create the world was kind of where the inspiration started from.
This jumping off point soon gave Berg-Einhorn the ability to lose himself in the show’s source material to develop his idea.
Berg-Einhorn: I actually created my own little collage of things from the book, things that are mentioned in the show that kind of resonated with me, and I put them all together, and I started to develop that into this idea that the world is made up of all of these little elements that kind of come into light as she remembers them
The end result? A giant lit up house frame surrounded by hanging boxes of various sizes whose contents get illuminated throughout the show depending on what time period the show currently is situated in and is grounded by items like a wooden staircase and door frame, a wonderful marriage of the abstract and concrete as memory often is. It’s the product of many many hours of work and many many hours of collaboration.
Berg-Einhorn: So trying to figure out how to marry all of those elements together was actually really exciting to figure out, cause it’s something I have not ever tried to achieve before. Lighting on top of lighting on top of lighting, that all comes together to create the space itself.
Another aspect of collaboration comes in the aforementioned Alisons. In Fun Home, every show three actors have the job of portraying one character’s arc. It’s a challenge, but it’s one the actors are all up to. Here’s Chavez again.
Chavez: I am lucky enough to be on stage the entire time observing all of my fellow actors. So I’m able to watch them, see what they’re doing, and then try to subtly implement mannerisms.
Despite premiering on Broadway almost 10 years ago, Fun Home has still remained relevant to audiences and Chavez has an idea on why, especially now, Fun Home is more needed than ever.
Chavez: There’s been a lot of things going on in the world right now that are preventing LGBTQ people from feeling like they can live authentically as themselves and this story is a cautionary tale of, of what happens when you don’t have community, when you don’t have visibility, when you don’t get to live authentically and how that can impact you and, and everyone around you in a negative way. But on the flip side of that, it’s also a story of great hope and of resilience and what can happen if you do have that visibility, if you do have that community.
And it’s getting to experience these multitude of emotions that make live theatre, and especially shows like Fun Home, so important. Here’s Schellhardt.
Schellhardt: I’m just really hoping that people can take a second to escape and come into a shared space and enjoy a beautiful story that might make them feel something. Feel hope, feel courage, feel inspired to tell the people they love that they love them.
Porchlight Music Theatre’s Fun Home runs at The Ruth Page Center for the Arts from now until March 2nd.
[Audio from “Ring of Keys” from Fun Home]
For WNUR News, I’m Sophia Casa.
