Until the Flood Draw the Circle
Review: In 'Draw the Circle,' a Daughter Becomes a Man
- Draw the Circle
- Off Broadway, Play , Solo Functioning
- Closing Date:
- Rattlestick Theater, 224 Waverly Pl.
- 866-811-4111
An autobiographical meditation on identity and presence, Mashuq Mushtaq Deen's solo show, "Describe the Circle," is the story of a suburban daughter named Shireen and a Brooklyn homo named Deen. They are the aforementioned person. And yet they are not.
In a series of monologues, sometimes gentle and sometimes harrowing, family members, lovers and others tell us about Shireen's growing unhappiness — the disorientation, the hospitalizations, the suicide attempts — and gradual recovery, which culminates in her becoming Deen through a gender transition. Neither Shireen nor Deen always appears equally a grapheme.
"Depict the Circle," which runs in repertory at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater with Dael Orlandersmith's "Until the Overflowing," opens with a picture of a smile girl in a ruby sweater, an prototype that fades as Mr. Deen, wearing jeans and a rumpled T-shirt, enters, stepping into the first of a number of lit squares.
A few days before Thanksgiving, Deen's girlfriend, Molly, is heading to Connecticut with Deen to see his parents, Indian immigrants who struggle to accept them. "We haven't seen them in two years," Molly explains. "It's like I've got to prove myself all over over again. Yes, I'chiliad white. No, I'm non Muslim. Aye, I'm a girl." Deen has even more than to show.
The play jumps back and along in fourth dimension, from Shireen's adolescence and early adulthood to Molly'south traffic-plagued drive to New England. Mr. Deen plays all the characters. These men and women approach Shireen'south, then Deen'due south, anguish with as much sympathy as they tin muster. Often, information technology'southward not a lot.
Deen's mother doesn't want to discuss his new identity. "Whatsoever it is, don't tell me," she says. "I tin can't handle information technology. Whatever it is you accept to do, please, can't you just await until nosotros're dead and gone?"
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Even Molly, who sometimes misses Shireen, has moments of anger. "He has hair everywhere," she says. "He changed. Because people refused to see him. Maybe he would have stayed a butch if they had merely used the freakin' pronoun he asked them to apply!"
Mr. Deen, a member of New Dramatists, joins an increasing number of transgender playwrights, like Basil Kreimendahl and Jess Barbagallo. Baldheaded, bearded and baby-faced, he is a winning presence, and he soon engages the audition with the issues of his characters. While regressive legislation about restroom apply and an attempted ban of transgender military recruits suggest the fear and suspicion that transgender and gender-fluid people experience, the Rattlestick audience was primed for engagement.
At the Sun night performance I saw, the crowd was dwelling house-game friendly, laughing and auspicious and urging Mr. Deen dorsum onstage for multiple bows, which sometimes made "Draw the Circle" feel less like a play and more than like an eloquent see group.
Every bit a certificate of Mr. Deen's pain and a plea for visibility, information technology is persuasive. If you can watch information technology without feeling compassion, encounter your cardiologist. But every bit a work of art, it'south less disarming.
Nether Chay Yew's efficient, unobtrusive management, Mr. Deen is no shaman. Audience distractions rattle him, and unlike solo performers like Anna Deavere Smith, Sarah Jones, Danny Hoch or Ms. Orlandersmith, his characters never come fully alive. He doesn't yet accept the gift for defining a person with a posture, a gesture or a linguistic tic, and his accents tend to travel.
Too not fully nowadays: Deen himself. Obviously, that'southward a choice braided into the Deoxyribonucleic acid of "Draw the Circumvolve." Mr. Deen has opted to trace his journey through the optics of onlookers. But by focusing so narrowly on gender, he provides a very limited cocky-portrait.
Of course, a gender transition — such a fundamental change in identity — is fascinating. But I tin can't believe that information technology's the only fascinating thing most Mr. Deen. A program note mentions that he is an activist and "a man of many hobbies, including bread baker, monster-maker and student of the classical guitar and tin whistle." I wanted to encounter that guy — the artist, the activist, the skilful baker and the lousy musician. (I mean, tin can anyone really master the tin whistle?)
In making a play nearly himself, Mr. Deen should draw the circumvolve wider.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/theater/draw-the-circle-review-mashuq-mushtaq-deen.html