Skip to main content
Kate Mura is a preternaturally gifted performer who tells an achingly human and uplifting story in her one-woman show, The Play About My Father, directed by Rusty Tennant at Fuse Theatre Ensemble.
Through singing, improv, mime and dance, plus a variety of voices and accents, Mura, who developed the play for over a decade, creates a wide assortment of characters from the real-life New Jersey community that helped her family after her father, Jim, was hurt in a freak accident.
Seamlessly shape-shifting from one persona to another, Mura begins narrating the story as Stella, her jovial, babushka-wearing great-aunt. As an older woman, Stella has seen her share of tragedies, but she continues to be delighted by humanity. When she talks about the Mura family’s mounting medical bills, she even chortles as she recalls how she used to sneak food from a buffet at the racetrack to help them stretch their strained budget.
Stella, like many of the characters, is in line in the afterlife, waiting to see if she’ll make it to heaven. In the meantime, she chats with the audience and enjoys being reunited with old friends and family who are also in the interminable queue.
One such person is Tracy, who describes herself as Kate’s best friend. To transform herself into the younger woman, Mura unties the babushka and lets it hang from her skirt as she shakes out her long wavy hair. If Stella charms the audience, Tracy holds herself at a distance, with a hand on her cocked hip and the facial expression of a bored and disgruntled teenager.
The single costume for the play is an ingenious piece of engineering and artistry that aids Mura in morphing into different physical and emotional entities. Jessica Kroeze created what Tennant conceived as a “magic skirt”—a long gray garment that’s so adaptable it takes only minor onstage adjustments for Mura to become each character. Sewn with an assortment of pockets, sleeves and clips, the skirt allows her to wear it like a jacket, a clerical robe, and even a pair of bib overalls.
Mura’s collaboration with these other artists adds an emotional resonance to a story that’s as much about community as it is about her personal experience. Tennant, for example, has designed a spellbinding set, turning Fuse’s tiny Back Door Theater into a whimsical vision that’s part ocean and part afterlife, with puffs of white tulle above and a shimmering white fabric on the floor that simultaneously suggests both sky and tides. By also wrapping white tulle around a swing, Tennant reminds us of the magic of childhood and the fact that it has to end.
Likewise, Tennant uses subtle sound design to transport audiences into the world of the story. Before the play begins, we hear recordings of ocean waves and a young girl’s voice (Mura) reading her mundane diary entries. “At gym, we played basketball. I made a point for the team.” Here, Mura speaks slowly, evoking an 8-year-old who’s learning to spell. Between scenes, a recording of her mother, Janet, reading parts of The Secret Garden to her further emphasizes how young and innocent Mura was when her life was upturned.
Tennant’s lighting, too, intensifies the various moods in the play. In one of the darkest scenes, Mura is bathed in red light as she sings Nirvana’s “Come as You Are” and mimes popping pills. In a later moment, she portrays her injured father as the moving lights behind her suggest shifting clouds or the foam of the ocean where her father was hurt.
A consistent presence throughout the hourlong show, all the ocean imagery serves as a reminder that humans can’t control nature, causing the smiling Stella to acknowledge the story is not “all happy, happy, joy, joy.” In the intimate space, though, she makes eye contact with the audience as she invites everyone to go out and “say nice things to each other.” By doing so, Mura reminds us that we’re all part of a community and that our words make a difference in other people’s lives, even in the worst of times.
SEE IT: The Play About My Father plays at the Back Door Theatre, 4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd., fusetheatreensemble.com. 7:30 pm Thursday–Saturday, 3 pm Sunday, through May 5. $25 suggested donation.