When up-and-coming playwright Jake Brasch first set out to write his play “Reservoir,” now playing at Hertz Stage at the Alliance Theatre through May 4, he thought he was writing a play about the science of the aging mind.
He had been commissioned by the Sloan Foundation, a philanthropic organization that funds research and education in science, to write a play about cognitive reserve (the principle that some individuals are able to fend off aging better than others by developing their brain with exercise, mental stimulation, nutrition and social engagement).
When Brasch sat down to write, however, he found his mind kept veering off haphazardly to memories of his quirky grandparents and a time in his life when he was battling his own brain: in the form of alcoholism.
In that chapter of life, he had been kicked out of college in New York due to alcohol abuse and had landed back home close to his grandparents. He gravitated toward them, hoping they might help him remember who he was before he lost his way.
But just as the fog began to clear from his own mind through sobriety, the fog set in on the minds of his grandparents, who were each drifting into various degrees of memory loss and senility.
His ascent to sobriety, as juxtaposed by their descent into dementia, became the crux of his play “Reservoir.”
The subject matters — alcoholism and dementia — could be the recipe for a downright depressing play. “Reservoir,” however, is anything but.
In fact, Brasch stated bluntly: “You will laugh your ass off.”
Credit: Greg Mooney
Credit: Greg Mooney
As a now sober alcoholic who has spent many hours in recovery meetings where sober 12-steppers tend to laugh hysterically at themselves and the absurd tales from their former drinking lives, and having grown up with a family that used humor to process everything, Brasch has a sharp sense of wit and comedic timing. Plus, Brasch was a professional clown for 10 years. He knows well the “thin line that separates laughter and pain,” as humorist Erma Bombeck once wrote.
Brasch’s semi-autobiographical play is so raw in its emotional truth, with such vivacious characters, ridiculous comedic antics and no-filter inner monologues, that the taboo subject matters become unlikely fodder for hilarity.
Some examples: Silver sneaker Jazzercise numbers are danced with an overly rambunctious instructor. Spinach rains down like confetti. A rock opera song is performed about chugging vanilla extract as a substitute for alcohol. Inflatable flamingos are worn by seniors like hula-hoops. Psychedelic fever dream sequences disorient the crowd. And countless one-liners earn howling laughter (particularly from the protagonist’s horny, Jewish grandfather Shrimpy who at one point gets to have a second bar mitzvah at the age of 83).
The protagonist of the fictionalized plot is named Josh (who is inspired by the playwright himself). Josh (played by Philip Schneider) becomes obsessed with curing his grandparents through the concept of cognitive reserve, which he reads about in a book at his minimum-wage-paying job at a used bookstore. Never mind the fact that Josh can’t even remember the alphabet in his freshly sober brain, he believes he knows the cure for his grandparents.
In the course of trying to help his grandparents (who lovingly humor him), it is his grandparents that actually help him. Over the course of the play Josh matures from his youthful arrogance and self-absorption (which might be irksome to audience members in the first half of the play) to recognize what his grandparents have already learned: that with age and wisdom comes the recognition of how little one actually knows.
He starts to see his grandparents for the full, flawed and storied humans they are beyond his limited preconceptions of them (particularly one grandmother whom he learns has more in common with him than he realized). He stumbles through repairing damage he’s caused in his addiction (especially his poor mother). And he learns that being sober is about far more than being abstinent from alcohol.
The play is so organically layered with lessons in life and sobriety that somehow it never feels cliché. And the tender moments that unfold between Josh and his grandparents hit the heart. By the end of the play, cheeks are as red from laughter as wet from tears.
“My mission is to process the world through humor,” Brasch said. “I write comedies about things that aren’t funny to be able to give folks the opportunity to laugh and cry, often in the same moment.”
Credit: Dave Burgess
Credit: Dave Burgess
When Amanda Watkins, director of new work for Alliance Theatre, first came across the script for “Reservoir,” Brasch had submitted it to compete in the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition. Alliance Theatre has operated the competition with the financial backing of the Kendeda Foundation for the past two decades. Playwriting students in their final year of graduate school are eligible.
Though Brasch did not win the competition, he did place in the final five. The finalists got to have their scripts heard at a public reading.
“We loved it so, so much, it never left our minds,” Watkins said. “We knew that we had to stage this play … it is equally heart warming, and heart wrenching.”
Watkins wasn’t the only one eager to materialize the play. The Denver Center for Performing Arts staged “Reservoir” from Jan. 17 through March 9. The Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles will stage it from June 18 through July 20 after its run in Atlanta. At all performances, Alliance Theatre has been recognized as a partner in bringing “Reservoir” to life.
If you go
“Reservoir.” Through May 4. Tickets start at $35. Hertz Stage at the Alliance Theatre. 1280 Peachtree St NE, Atlanta. 404-733-4600. alliancetheatre.org
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