Family is a Big Act

I could feel the space around me like a big, black world. I listened like an animal. My listening was afraid. Afraid of sound. Tense. Like any second something could invade me.

- Curse of the Starving Class, Sam Shepard

It seems like a miracle, sometimes, the way Sam Shepard captures the nuance of human emotion in his plays, especially as it pertains to the major difficulties of family life. Kristen Lynch agrees.

"I'm in LOVE with Sam Shepard," she told me, smiling with her whole bright beautiful face as she leaned toward me on the swing couch in my living room the other night. "After saying those words, his words...it lifts you up."

It is a miracle, too, that Kristen and her husband Murat Ozcan are staging Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class this week, tomorrow through Sunday, at The Actors Fund Arts Center, just when I was hoping to hear the brilliant playwright's words brought to life.

The Park Slope couple are community pillars, the owners of the wonderful Brooklyn Acting Lab program for children and adults, and the super cozy (and delicious) Cafe Collioure on 7th Avenue. The two generously donated their time and energies to stage a brilliant performance at my first InspireCorps benefit, for which I am eternally grateful. They are true believers in the uplifting power of the arts, and its ability to bring people together.

The production of Curse marks a grand return to staging plays other than children's theater for the couple, who have been busy with their businesses and raising their own kids, now 9 and 14. Murat--who directs Curse -has produced and directed for 25 years, much of the time in Paris, where he emigrated from Turkey in 1987 after graduating from the Izmir Academy of Fine Arts School of Theatre, and then in New York. Kristen, a native Brooklynite, went to LaGuardia for acting and then graduated from the Tisch School of Arts at NYU.

In Curse, Kristen plays Ella Tate, a mother who, she says, "despite her flaws, takes care of her husband and children in an honorable way." The play features an ensemble cast including Donovan Mendelovitz as the father, Wesley Tate, Charly Bivona as daughter Emma, and Stephen Gleason as son Taylor.

She chose this play about the struggling-but-strong Tate family as a way to "really dig in" to the work of Shepard, who passed away in July. She felt the lesser-staged work depicted many of the themes society is struggling with today, among them "a failing system, isolation, the debt crisis, and a class of people who are feeling marginalized and ashamed and not able to get out of it."

Kristen and Murat contribute greatly to the community with their work. Brooklyn Acting Lab (formerly Young Players Theater) has for years been offering awesome drama classes for kids, complete with full-scale productions at The Actor's Fund Arts Center, and has just recently added an Adult Acting Lab on Wednesdays taught by Murat.

On any morning, Murat is a smiling face at Collioure, soft spoken yet passionate, connecting people and saying hello as his friendly young staff serves up yummy fare.

Their production of Curse promises likewise to offer up delicious morsels to feed the soul and explore ways in which we can better understand.

"Through this play, Shepard shows how we are not sharing the tools, resources and education necessary to help people who are really struggling to have a good life, who deserve a good life," Kristen told me, her eyes wide in concern.

"At the core of our work is always human connection," she said, adding (because we'd talked about it's importance) "we always say hello."

Come support these wonderful artists and get inspired by Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class at The Mark O'Donnell Theater Thursday, March 22, through Sunday, March 25th. Visit Brooklynactinglab.org, or buy tickets HERE.

Thank you Kristen and Murat for your beautiful community-building work, and your inspiration. You've answered a dream staging Sam Shepard's work, can't wait to see it Friday!!

Shalom, Inshallah, Peace be with You.