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Ashley Mellinger scripted a witty conversation between two webcam models. Fyndi Jermany crafted a category-defying musical experience. Kailey Rhodes unleashed a meditation on the role of

blame in myth and life. Francisco Garcia told a tale of two sisters who are casualties of the Trump Administration’s barbarous family separations. Mellinger, Jermany, Rhodes and Garcia are

the creators of the four new plays that form _Wonderland_, a virtual theater festival from Portland Playhouse that runs through January 19. Each work mirrors our damaged and divided world

(Mellinger says the artists were asked for reflections of “our sociopolitical landscape”). Yet the ways that the plays boldly leap across space, time and genre remind you that while COVID-19

has shaken Portland’s theatre community, it hasn’t shattered it. _Wonderland_ was born of an army of innovators led by producer Charles Grant and populated by multitudes, including the main

creators of the festival’s selections. I spoke to all four of them about the art of creating brazen and beautiful theater in 2020. ------------------------- FRANCISCO GARCIA, _545_

------------------------- _The title _545_ refers to the number of migrant children separated from their families by the Trump Administration as of October (by December, it had risen to

666). With actors Lulu Kashiwabara and Mila Kashiwabara (who are sisters), Francisco Garcia fought to convey the human toll behind that statistic with a tale of two siblings who are

imprisoned and taken from their mother._ HOW LONG DID YOU HAVE TO WRITE THE PLAY? I think I did about three drafts. When I found out [that Lulu Kashiwabara and Mila Kashiwabara] could do the

show, I started building the show around them. I sent them questionnaires to fill out so we could build upon their relationship and so I could find out about their backgrounds more, and a

lot of that stuff was incorporated into the show. Sponsor WHAT WERE SOME OF THE DETAILS THAT YOU ENDED UP USING? There’s a detail where the younger sister talks about how much she misses her

stuffed animal and that it’s so hard to sleep not having her stuffed animal there anymore. And that came from a questionnaire asking both of them if they had any personal items that were

really important to them. The stuffed animal’s name was Carrots—it’s a bunny—and I incorporated that detail into the show. DO YOU SEE _545_ AS A CALL TO ACTION? When I watched the first cut

of the show after we recorded it, I really just felt blown away and touched by the beautiful work that the two girls did, in terms of connecting to the material and giving these really

truthful performances. My hope is that when someone sees the show, they’ll see that these things are happening and that it’s not okay. WHEN YOU DIRECTED MILAGRO’S _SWIMMING WHILE DROWNING_,

AN INTERVIEWER ASKED YOU IF THERE WAS A COLOR YOU FELT REPRESENTED THE PLAY. IS THERE A COLOR YOU WOULD PICK TO REPRESENT _545_? The immediate color that comes to me is blue. To me, at

least, it’s a very emotional color. It has sadness in it, but then there’s also comfort in it as well—and in a way, I find hope in blue. Does that make sense? ------------------------- FYNDI

JERMANY, _CATHARSIS_ Sponsor ------------------------- _Fyndi Jermany has called herself an “upcoming artist,” but if the ambition of _Catharsis _is any indication, she has fully arrived. A

pastiche of musical genres that confronts classism, racism, sexism and community violence, it’s a piece that harnesses her talents as both a writer and a performer._ COULD YOU DESCRIBE

_CATHARSIS_? I would describe it as a three-part music video. It’s a combined musical/music video that talks about identity, religion, violence, which are all things that aren’t new. COULD

YOU TALK ABOUT THE IDEA OF COMMUNITY VIOLENCE A BIT MORE? One of the opening lyrics [in _Catharsis_]_ _is: “He shot him/He beats her/He rapes them/And she concurs.” I grew up in poverty,

seeing how normalized violence is—and not knowing that some of these things that are “normal” for many of us growing up in these situations are totally outrageous for other people. People

getting shot, people getting raped—these sound like obvious things that would cause alarm, but there are so many people that I know and so many people that I grew up with…there are so many

stories where people were just taught to be quiet and don’t talk about it. And what I’m hoping to do is get people to say, “Wait a minute, there are some issues that we need to talk about

within our families, within our communities.” COULD YOU TALK ABOUT THE STYLE OF THE MUSIC? Sponsor I created some instrumentals for the first act. And for the last act, I’m singing, and it’s

almost Broadway-ish. That’s how act three ends, and it’s quite a shift from act two, when I’m hardcore rapping. ------------------------- ASHLEY MELLINGER, _PRIVATE CHAT_

------------------------- _When Ashley Mellinger was in her early twenties, she was a webcam model (she quit after being promoted at the New York wine bar where she worked). In _Private

Chat_, she revisits her camming days, pulling double duty as both playwright and actor (she plays a struggling cam model who gets schooled by a seasoned pro)._ COULD YOU START BY DESCRIBING

_PRIVATE CHAT_ AND HOW YOU CAME UP WITH THE IDEA? I met my co-star in _Private Chat_, Treasure Lunan, a couple years ago when we worked on a project together, and then we became really good

friends. Through our friendship and hanging out with each other, we both discovered that we had been sex workers in a past life. We had both been cam models and worked in that industry. I

hadn’t really seen any portrayals of sex workers’ stories that weren’t steeped in darkness and drama and trauma and pain. I wanted to write a short piece about two people in the wild, who

are having a regular day in the office. WHICH CHARACTER DO YOU PLAY AND WHAT CHARACTER DOES TREASURE PLAY? Sponsor I play a character named SnuggBuddyxx and Treasure plays EnbyMilf420. Our

characters are both only known by their screen names. The whole premise is that [SnuggBuddy] is trying to bump up her ranking as a performer, so she decides to purchase some time with the

top-ranked performer, who happens to be the character played by Treasure. I don’t think SnuggBuddy has completely divorced herself from this stigma that surrounds sex work. She doesn’t

totally see it as a legitimate profession, so in that sense she has a little bit of a growth arc over the course of the story. DID THAT ARC CORRESPOND TO CONVERSATIONS YOU’D HAD WITH OTHER

PEOPLE OR CONVERSATIONS YOU’D HAD WITH YOURSELF? It’s not a conversation I have often enough because people get really awkward and uncomfortable talking about sex work for whatever reason.

So hopefully, this will be a fun, light way of starting those dialogues. ------------------------- KAILEY RHODES_, THE MYTHOLOGY OF BLAME_ ------------------------- _Shaming through the ages

is the subject of Kailey Rhodes’ _The Mythology of Blame_. Faced with constructing a story that could connect vilified women of legend like Eve and Pandora with their twenty-first century

counterparts, Rhodes recruited four artists—Tyharra Cozier, Kisha Jarrett, Claire Rigsby and Andrea Vernae—to add new narrative elements to her vast vision._ TELL ME ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF THE

PROJECT AND HOW YOU CAME UP WITH THE IDEA. Sponsor There is a painting by Henry Fuseli called _The Nightmare_. It’s this painting of a woman on her back and there’s a gargoyle near her—and

it’s basically to represent incubi and succubi and how they’re these demons that people believe visit you at night and take out all of your energy with sexual exploits. And I just thought it

was so fascinating that we externalize a lot of the reasons we are human and place the blame somewhere else. The idea of exploring that through five different voices was the initial impetus

of the project. It doesn’t have a director. It has five points of view, and even a sixth, because our videographer and editor, Tamera Lyn, is a perspective in and of herself. It’s six women

talking about blame and exploring themes of femininity and anger and sexuality and acceptance and belonging and accountability and peace. DID YOU FEEL LIKE YOU LEARNED NEW THINGS FROM YOUR

COLLABORATORS ABOUT BLAME AND HOW IT AFFECTS PEOPLE? Yes! One of the big things that changed was I really was fixated on myth, legend, folklore, and where we see blame and how that affects

us—and how we blame, not just women or not just each other, but whole groups of people. And then when we got together and started writing, so much of our individual selves poured out.   DID

IT BECOME A LESS ABSTRACT THING AND COME BACK MORE TO THE SPECIFICS OF YOUR OWN LIVES? No, I think it almost got more abstract. It’s easy to talk about a myth in concrete terms, but when we

talked about ourselves—“When do we blame ourselves? And when do we blame each other? And when do we hold each other accountable? And when do we take power back?”—it became a little bit more

abstract, because we don’t have the answers to [those questions]. I’m so grateful to my collaborators for saying yes to me and then giving themselves so fully, especially in this year. When

we came together and got to move together—six feet apart, in masks, not touching—it gave me this intimacy that we all realized we were experiencing, and that was just extraordinarily joyful.

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