By Cris Franco
Author, John J. Caswell, Jr. has channeled his Arizona childhood into a new play about a snarky Mexican-American family wrestling with an alcoholic patriarch who may or may not be repeatedly abducted by aliens. Titled Wet Brain, New York’s Playwrights Horizons and MCC (Manhattan Class Company) Theater are co-presenting the world premiere described as being, “not only freed from realism but also, perhaps unmoored from Earth itself. With humor and horror, the play delivers a transfixing tale of a family mining the depths of loss, traveling lightyears to find a language for closure.”
Caswell, Jr. began this semi-autobiographical journey depicting events grounded in reality—at first, in a style and vision uncharacteristic of his offbeat authorial tastes and tendencies—until the playwright’s own reality presented him with a reason to explore perspectives beyond what we think we know and see. Caswell, Jr., whose recent Off-Broadway debut Man Cave was “a political drama wrapped in the spooky pleasures of the horror genre [that] works on both levels” (The New York Times), merged the work’s depiction of a family’s deep, wounded unknowns with those that hover just above all humanity. The story exists where science fiction intersects with my dysfunctional familiar.
Wet Brain’s cast includes a cadre of fresh hispano talent, including Frankie J. Alvarez (Looking, to the yellow house) as Ron, Ceci Fernández (Men on Boats, Tiny Beautiful Things) as Angelina, Florencia Lozano (Playwrights: Placebo; Rinse, Repeat) as Mona, Julio Monge (Oedipus El Rey, On Your Feet!) as Joe, and Arturo Luis Soria (Ni Mi Madre, The Inheritance) as Ricky. Along with the Latinx writer and performers, Wet Brain’s creative team includes costume designer Haydee Zelideth Antuñano. Haydee is a Chicana artist who relishes sharing stories through what people wear. She grew up on both sides of the border and these experiences inform her point of view and how she approaches her work as a storyteller, giving depth, dimension, and color to the specificities of someone’s life. And Wet Brain does get into some specifics of the author’s life – with an eerie spin.
With a background in devised theater, Caswell, Jr. pursued a process with the play’s director, Dustin Wills, that emphasizes collaboration with the design team to create a cohesive, and insinuating, vocabulary of dread. Members of the creative team worked together in a room for a week, dissecting and discussing the play and future production, before going off and doing their individual design work. “We had a really open dialogue where script and technical elements were informing one another,” says Caswell, Jr. “We all got on the same page and into the same play together, and having that time was amazing. We realized we wanted to pull away from any campier genre elements and into a realism interjected by moments of fantastical departure and to play with the notion that what goes unseen is often scariest.”
Caswell, Jr. adds of working with Wills: “Dustin is cut from the same devised theater cloth, of making whole worlds from the ground up. When he approaches a script, he’s not just going to service your play and give you what’s on the page, he’s going to interpret and translate that play from page into life, and that requires vision. That’s the kind of director I always want to work with.”
Playwrights Horizons Artistic Director Adam Greenfield says, “Wet Brain, with its haunting, haunted characters and unnerving humor, became seared into my brain from my very first encounter with the script. John J. Caswell, Jr. writes with a very sharp pencil, meticulously crafting an American family play, in the tradition of contemporary drama, only to then explode it open. Wet Brain pushes against the boundaries that constrain our domestic lives, challenging the form of theater itself to reach farther, and contain more. In this new play, Caswell has created an indelible family portrait and grants us frightening, intimate access to it. It’s a play that demands attention, and I’m honored to produce it along with MCC (Manhattan Class Company).”
MCC Theater Artistic Director Will Cantler says, “I couldn’t agree more with Adam’s thoughts. We love plays that surprise us with the truth of the unexpected. In Wet Brain, John brings his gift for illuminating the fantastical inside the mundane to this very human, very knowable family.”
In this exciting time, when Latinx stories are finally being shown on the small and large screen, it’s great to know that the stage is also giving voice to our new authors like John J. Caswell, Jr. whose work has garnered him great recognition including the L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award for Wet Brain, the 2020 Paula Vogel Playwriting Award from the Vineyard Theater, the 2020 Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award, a 2018 MacDowell Fellowship, a 2018 SPACE on Ryder Farm Creative Residency, Play Group member at Ars Nova, and the 2017 Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship. John attended the Juilliard School, Hunter College, and Arizona State University.
Wet Brain runs until June 25 at Playwrights Horizons’ Mainstage Theater in New York City. For all show info, visit https://mcctheater.org.