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Jigsaw Nation

nytheatre.com review by Debbie Hoodiman
August 15, 2005

At the beginning of Jigsaw Nation, a young woman enthusiastically introduces herself as a writer to an older woman sitting on a bench in a park. After explaining that she's working on a project, she asks, "What do you think it means to be an American?" The older woman responds, "I thought you were going to ask me something easy!"In the tradition of documentary theater popularized by such artists as Anna Deavere Smith and Eve Ensler, four writers from the Relentless Theater Company interviewed more than 50 Americans about what it means to be an American, transcribed their exact words, created monologues, and now present their stories. Jigsaw Nation is performed by five actors (Shannon Burkett, Elizabeth Flax, Kittson O'Neill, Keith Randolph Smith, and Charles Sprinkle) who portray such diverse people as: a young man baffled by people's offense at hip-hop lyrics when mainstream movies might be more violent; shoppers at the Mall of Americas; immigrants from France, Yugoslavia, and Cairo; a Brooklyn native who wants to exercise her right as an American not to cook; a swearing Black man who tells all who will hear that "Red, white, and blue is black"; a young woman whose fiance leaves her because she can't have children and how she triumphs; and many more. The most compelling part of this kind of theater is that when you witness the same actors speaking the words of very different people, people with such different stories and people who are often, I imagine, quite unlike themselves, it emphasizes how the characters are alike, the common humanity that all the characters share. This is interesting stuff.Parts of the show that particularly caught my interest include an Iranian woman (played by Elizabeth Flax) who didn't understand why people thought she should feel connected to the events of September 11th until a bank cancelled her account because she comes from a largely Muslim country; and a monologue by a young Puerto Rican student (played by Kittson O'Neill) at an all-white Connecticut boarding school who can see through all the prejudices thrown at her. Though she doesn't fit in at the school and no longer fits into her neighborhood, she knows there is something inside of her that thrives.For the most part, the actors do a nice job with their characterizations, though I suspect that as the company develops this piece more, the actors will find more specificity.My only concern about the show is that because the stories are so varied and touch on so many subjects, there isn't a crystal clear theme. The company may want to focus on a narrower topic. Or, perhaps, like the metaphor in the title implies, the wide variety of topics is the point: Odd shaped pieces seeming so different, yet somehow fitting together, is what it means to be American.