The last laugh ‘The Clean House’ explores regenerative power of laughter, house cleaning By Adam Goldstein goldstea@mscd.edu Photos courtesy of the Denver Center Theatre Company Romi Dias as Matilde in the Denver Center Theatre Company production of “The Clean House

Sometimes, the greatest defenses against the vagaries of life are the simplest. Denver Center Theatre Company’s current production of “The Clean House” highlights two such protections: laughter and cleaning.    In this production that seems to skip between humor and tragedy, playwright Sara Ruhl weaves disparate and epic themes together with the pure and simple power of humor. The play centers around a bourgeois household and its inhabitants: the couple that own it, their maid, their family and acquaintances.    For such a small cast of characters, the conflicts are ambitious, ranging from marital infidelity to obsessive/compulsive cleaning habits, to the search for the perfect joke. Underlying the different subplots, however, is a powerful message of stoicism, hope and dignity.    Caitlin O’Connell plays Lane, a tightly wound surgeon with grand illusions of control. Her husband, Charles, played by Jamie Horton, is in the same line of work and falls into infidelity with one of his patients, a breast cancer patient named Ana, played by Judith Delgado. Lane’s sister, Virginia, harbors a secret, yet transparent, desire for Charles, which she stifles with an obsessive cleaning habit. As the official cleaning woman of the house, Matilde, played by Romi    Dias, prefers the meditative search for the perfect joke to the depressing doldrums of upkeep.    The characters’ conflicts are varied and the drama gets ahead of itself at times with its full menu. Still, the thread that ties the multifaceted plotline together is powerful. Through the sorrows of Lane, the newborn love of Charles and Ana, the OCD of Virginia and the persistent humor of Matilde, a stoic and resigned joy resonates through the refined use of thematic parallels.    Georgia seeks order and comfort in a compulsive bent toward cleaning. For her, every dust mote must be eradicated and every crooked picture straightened. She craves the process so acutely that she swaps jobs with Matilde, whose obsession lies in the chaos of humor. Her self-professed goal is to find the perfect joke, an irreproachable gem of wit and humor whose power could kill. These polar opposites illustrate different extremes: the mania of maintaining an illusion of control versus the combative conviction to laugh in the face of tragedy.    Meanwhile, Lane’s pain at the infidelity of her husband mirrors Ana’s tragic fate as a cancer victim. The two characters, whose situations would seemingly make them natural enemies, eventually find common ground in their respective traumas.    When Charles first leaves his wife, chaos reigns in the house and the heart of Lane. All efforts to keep the space clean are abandoned. Charles and Ana dance together in an elevated gallery on the stage, and the couple throw their half-eaten apples and discarded objects to land squarely at Lane’s feet. The detritus that litters her floor symbolizes the discarded love, memories and joys that made up the marriage.    While Lane devolves into depression and hopelessness, Ana’s reaction to her sickness is defiant and resigned. Instead of undergoing a mastectomy, she decides to yield to fate’s mandate. She asks for Ana’s lethal joke and decides to let go of life with the ultimate release: laughter.    Again, the dichotomy between control and resignation, between agony and acceptance is sharply sketched in these differing characters and their conflicts.    All of the characters’ separate agendas, conflicting interests, jealousies, passions, pains and problems intersect squarely in the foyer of Charles and Lane. Production designer Edward Lapine creates an anchored central space, but manages to incorporate memories, exotic locales and dreams into the main stage. The scope of the drama is vast, as Matilde ruminates on her former life in Portugal and Charles scales a mountainous wilderness to find the cure for cancer-ridden Ana. The use of the stage in the production hints at far-off locales and past memories, as actors pantomime through the background like so many set pieces. Simultaneously, a sometimes antiseptic, sometimes chaotic central living room is the center of the drama.    This centrality keeps the drama approachable, even as the events carry the characters across the world and their memories brings the audience through history.    As the unifying elements, laughter and cleaning seem to encompass a good deal of life’s struggles and pains in the play. For each character and their separate ennui, each has a different way of dealing with disappointment and tragedy. Playwright Ruhl sums up the defining characteristic of a character as, “how much material space you are making for the future and what you’re holding on to from the things of the past.”    This is a telling yardstick for anyone dragged down by past sorrows and sadness, and the inherent challenge of its message is striking. In the defiant act of laughter, in sifting through the refuse and dust of the past, there is release. In the end, acceptance and letting go is the only true path to contentment. (L to R) Caitlin O’Connell as Lane, Romi Dias as Matilde and Charlotte Booker as Virginia in the Denver Center Theatre Company production of “The Clean House.”

Hell hath no fury like a woman on wheels
by Jeremy Johnson • jjohn308@mscd.edu

Photos by Matthew Jonas • jonasm@mscd.edu

       St. Patrick’s day is often known to be one of the more rowdy and rambunctious holidays of the year. It was no surprise, then, that the historically seedy Denver Coliseum hosted a rather surly group of ladies known as the Denver Roller Dolls for an evening full of bone-crunching, butt-bruising excitement.
   The league’s debut bout was billed as the “Dawn of the Dolls,” and it created what may be the dawn of a new era of extreme sports for fans near and far.
   The debut pitted The Green Barrettes against The Bad Apples in the first bout since the league was created nearly four months ago.
   “ It’s a labor of love,” Bad Apples’ Kitty Kaos said. “The amount of hours and planning and time that went into this and talking the Coliseum into letting an unknown into the venue was a big, big deal.”
   Many of the DRD came from Rocky Mountain Roller Girls league, which began competing in August of 2004. Many of those that split from the RMRG said it was in search of a more competitive “sport-like” environment.
   “ There’s a lot of showmanship in roller derby in the past and it’s kind of been tied to wrestling,” the Green Barrette’s Sissy Rinkshaw said. “But we as a league decided we would not do the fake fighting thing.”
   “ If there’s fights, they’ll be for real; I can guarantee that,” Rinkshaw added. “We made it a sport, again.”
And a brutal sport it is.
   Roller Derby consists of two teams and an oval track. Though the tracks are traditionally banked, the DRD compete on flat, concrete tracks, instead.
   Aggressive by nature, the hip-checking, pushing and spilling can tend to over-shadow a sport that relies squarely on endurance, agility, speed and strategy. And, perhaps, a little St. Patty’s day luck.
   “ Roller derby beats out every sport there is today,” Green Barrette’s Friction VixXxen said. “There’s a lot of strategy that goes into it but sometimes you’re just all Harry Carrey all over the track just trying to stay up.”
   The goal of roller derby is simple. A bout consists of three timed periods and the objective, like most sports, is to accumulate the most points by the bout’s end.
   Each team consists of five skaters that include three blockers, one pivot and one jammer. The pivot usually sets the pace for the pack, while the jammer is the only player on the team that can score points. Skaters often rotate positions from one round to another.
   The blockers and pivots begin each round at the single whistle. Seconds later, the jammers take off to a double whistle and begin pursuit of the pack. The first jammer to cut through the entire pack, without being knocked out of bounds, is the lead jammer. At that point, the “jam” has begun and both jammers can begin to score points based on how many opposing skaters they pass while remaining in bounds.
   The jam ends after two minutes. The lead jammer can also end the jam at any point and may due so for strategic reasons.
   The rules of the rink are similar to those of the hockey kind. Hitting is allowed in the form of hip, torso and shoulder-checks. Another legal move is “whipping,” in which a skater (usually a blocker and sometimes the pivot) “whips” the jammer around, increasing her speed and sometimes allowing her to pass more quickly through the pack.
   “ You know the big girls are going to be awesome blocking and the little girls are going to be awesome jamming,” Bad Apples’ Jersey Trouble said. “But it all comes down to ‘Do you have the heart for it and are you going to go out there and work your ass off?’ If you are, you’ll be a great roller derby girl.”
   Roller Derby began during the Great Depression when promoter Leo Seltzer created the sport to compete with the popular trend of dance marathons. The sport has morphed through several stages of theatrics and doomed economics in the decades since, but is looking for a new revival in today’s shifting sports market.
   “ I think roller derby is quite the phenomenon,” Kaos said. “Especially the fact that this is such an old sport and that it is making such a huge comeback.”
   And the intensity and sincerity of the sport – and perhaps the short skirts and decorative panites – will likely keep the crowds coming back for more.
   “ I said first and foremost that it was really just a great excuse for the exhibitionist buried deep inside,” VixXxen said.
   “ And some of us that don’t have it buried very deep inside,” recruit Sin Dixie added with a laugh.
   It’s not all fun and flirting, though.
   “ It’s absolutely a sport,” Green Barrette’s Sheila Tack said. “Anybody that says it’s not can kiss my ass.”
   The true cause for the Denver derby revival is largely due to the efforts put forth by the members of the DRD.
“ Not only are they hard-core bitches on the track, they are powerhouses,” DPD spokeswoman and Green Barrette Audrey Rugburn said. “I mean, we organized this and put it all on ourselves in a matter of months and its really inspiring.”
   The skaters as a whole are an inspiration. Many of them trained two or three times a week in order to prepare for the debut and the athletes that make up the league are professionals, students and mothers in their spare time.
   “ We’re doing it for a good cause and we pay out of our own pocket and we work our asses off,” Rinkshaw said. “I work full-time and have a three-year-old daughter and roller derby is the other part of my life.”
   Each member of the DPD is also required to do 24 hours of service to charities of their choice and the league itself works with charities such as The Gathering Place, Habitat for Humanity and Project Angel Heart.
   “ We wanted to do something for the community,” Green Barrette’s Pho Kyu said. We felt it was important to give back to the community.”
   And for the men, the bout provides all the competition and grueling athleticism that has always fascinated the lesser species. Along with a little bit of leg.
   “ Any time you get girls bumping into each other and falling down in little short skirts, it’s always fun. Right?” spectator Brian Knowles said. “So I say ‘Come all."