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The Enduring Legend of Marinka Pinka
and Tommy Atomic
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By Oana-Maria Cajal
Directed by Joanna Settle
A co-production with SummerNITE, a program of Northern
Illinois University
The Theatre Building, Chicago
July 1999
About the Text:
In the wake of BLOOD LINE's success,
Joanna Settle was invited by Northern Illinois University
to direct their annual SummerNITE production which
serves as a showcase for the graduating MFA class.
Oana-Maria Cajal’s modern, absurdist
fairy tale, The Enduring Legend of Marinka Pinka and
Tommy Atomic, is set in a fictional refugee camp in
Eastern Europe. The inhabitants entertain bittersweet
dreams of a future that will leave behind both their
poverty and their history.
Conversations of how to address the
text’s eerie timeliness (during this period,
the New York Times ran daily photographs of refugees
from Kosovo) ultimately led to the decision to make
the work a co-production between Division 13 Productions
and NIU. D13’s strength with design-centric work
provided a strong compliment to Cajal’s evocative
text, specifically in drawing images from the media
and re-imagining them in theatrical context.
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The imigration center. Also seen
is the installation treatment of the audience area
- covered in copies of identifying documents such as
drivers licenses, passports, birth certificates. The
stage is covered in bright green astroturf.
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About the Production:
Audiences entered the playing space (one of
the studio theatres in Chicago’s Theatre Building) through
the flaps of a Red Cross tent. Revealed on the stage was a
woman, sleeping on a mattress in the middle of a field of
bright green Astroturf, in front of another tent. The seats,
floors, and walls of the audience area were littered with
immigration documents, forms of identification, and legal
treatises on refugee status. Life-size, faceless puppets
sat in several seats, and were jerked to standing during one
scene to stand in line in the camp's immigration center.
The actors worked with Settle to form a community
of the displaced: people who did not know one another or
like one another, who did not speak the same dialects and
who could not understand each another, and whose knowledge
of their neighbor was limited to rumor and ethnic prejudice.
Even in the face of these rifts, leaving one another would
become yet another unbearable separation.
Mike Frank’s evocative sound design
featured the raw, animal music of authentic gypsy clans.
Performers from D13 included Eve Alexander as Little Eva,
Mark Ulrich as the darkly fascinating Herr Faust and Anne
DeAcetis as his protégée Yuli, a 14-year old
Russian boy.
Program Information:
Scenic Design: Sahin Sahinoglu
Lighting Design: Jack Magraw
Costume Design: Melanie Baumgartner
Sound Design: Mike Frank
Stage Manager: Lesley Anne Stone
Cast:
Eve Alexander (Little Eva)
Kris Allen (Translator)
Debra Babich (Penca)
Tony Casale (Twin)
Anne DeAcetis (Yuli)
Jason Hagemann (Mr. H.)
Terry Hamilton (Misha)
Dana Hardy (Chorus)
Julie Hart (Eva)
David Ihrig (Tank)
Christian Kohn (Grabowski)
John Lu (Businessman)
Ryan Malo (Twin)
Felisha Norman (Bambi)
James Overlin (Barbic)
Harry Simmon (Octav)
Heatherly Stephens (Seraphina)
Mark Ulrich (Herr Faust)
Production Staff:
Technical Director: Tom Floeter
Assistant Director: Katie Taber
Second Assistant Director: Tom Duncan
Sound and Light Board Operators: Jake Austin, Randy Stonitsch
Dramatug: Megan Rodgers
Vocal Coach: Tanera Marshall
Producer: Alexander F. Adducci
SummerNITE Artistic Director: Christopher Markle
Literary Managers and Assistants to Mr. Markle: Kris Allen,
Dana Hardy
Marketing Director: David W. Booth
Company Manager: Tom Duncan
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