The Virginian-Pilot: One-person show ‘Every Brilliant Thing’ offers Navy a fresh approach to mental wellness

Nine performances, using improv, audience interaction and comedy, tell one person’s story of growing up with a mother who has suicidal depression.

Playing the father in an awkward scene in the family car is audience member and senior chief Jean Bissainthe, alongside Candunn Jennette in her performance of “Every Brilliant Thing” on Oct. 25 at Naval Support Activity Hampton Roads.

Ice cream. Sunlight. Old people holding hands. Bubble wrap. Friendly cats. Track seven on every great record.

Those are just a few of the million brilliant things in life that the Virginia Stage Company reminded sailors to count during a Wednesday performance at Naval Support Activity Hampton Roads in Norfolk.

“I have some advice for anyone who’s been contemplating suicide,” said Candunn Jennette, the Virginia Stage performer who narrated the show. “Don’t do it. Things get better. It may not always get brilliant, but they do get better.”

Candunn Jennette, with the Virginia Stage Company, talks passionately about her special list during her performance of “Every Brilliant Thing” on Wednesday, October 25, 2023, at Naval Support Activity Hampton Roads. (Stephen M. Katz/The Virginian-Pilot)

Roughly 50 sailors attended the one-hour, one-person performance of “Every Brilliant Thing,” which tells one person’s story of growing up with a mother who has suicidal depression.

The show, which uses improv, audience interaction and comedy, was the first of eight taking place at Hampton Roads military installations over the next month. The performances offer the Navy a fresh approach to conversations about mental wellness as the service undertakes a massive effort to change the way it treats sailors experiencing mental health crises.

“This is a piece that is meant to be the beginning of a conversation, not the end of it,” said Tom Quaintance, producing artistic director for the VSC.

Candunn Jennette speaks as a child to a therapist’s sock puppet named Rusty during her performance of “Every Brilliant Thing.” (Stephen M. Katz/The Virginian-Pilot)

Virginia Stage Company began looking at small cast shows on the heels of the pandemic. When Quaintance read the script, he was immediately struck by the way the play tackles some of life’s most difficult topics — depression, suicide and loss — in a warm and accessible way. He had lost a sister to suicide.

“This show, while it takes you to some tough places, it doesn’t leave you there,” Quaintance said.

The play was first performed at the Wells Theatre a year and a half ago. As mental health crises became more prevalent during pandemic-related isolation, Quaintance said the theater company had the idea to bring the show to the military community.

“We can go in, start a conversation and, we hope, make a difference in how people think and talk about mental health and suicide,” Quaintance said.

“Every Brilliant Thing” was performed three times aboard the USS George H.W. Bush in June. The series will be performed at Navy Cyber Defense Operations Command, Naval Station Norfolk, Naval Air Station Oceana and Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek throughout November.

Candunn Jennette reads through the notes she jotted down while growing up as the narrator in “Every Brilliant Thing.” (Stephen M. Katz/The Virginian-Pilot)

Throughout the play, the performer narrates her perspective of her mother’s struggles with suicidal depression. The perspective evolves and deepens as the narrator ages from 7 years old to her mid-30s and experiences her own accomplishments, love, loss and mental health struggles. But each time, the narrator returns to a list she is creating of every brilliant thing about life, adding new brilliant things.

Water fights. Really good oranges. Wearing a cape. Peeing in the ocean and nobody knows. The list goes on.

Jamie Sosaya, a boatswain’s mate master chief, called the show “phenomenal” and said it was the best suicide prevention workshop she has been part of in her 23-year naval career.

“It hits home,” Sosaya said after the show, with tears in her eyes.

Part of what made it so successful, Lt. Cmdr. Katie Erwin said, is the audience interaction. Previous workshops used PowerPoint presentations or seminar formats, she said, but with “Every Brilliant Thing,” members of the audience are pre-selected to act as a veterinarian, the narrator’s father, husband and guidance counselor. Those selected are guided through improvised dialogue.

Actor Candunn Jennette circles the room to high-five every audience member during “Every Brilliant Thing.” (Stephen M. Katz/The Virginian-Pilot)

Erwin was chosen to act as the narrator’s guidance counselor.

“It was very heartfelt and it could relate to a lot of different people on a lot of different levels,” Erwin said. “Suicide is a tough subject to broach, but it was a lighthearted conversation and presentation.”

Quartermaster First Class Jarien Marquez said the show opens the door for conversations about mental health, whether sailor to sailor or friend to friend.

“People feel like there isn’t room for people to have that conversation, but this teaches everybody how to start the conversation and how to use the resources we have to help in those situations,” Marquez said.

After her performance of “Every Brilliant Thing,” Candunn Jennette hugs audience member Jean Bissainthe, a senior chief who played the role of her father. (Stephen M. Katz/The Virginian-Pilot)

The sailors also took home personal lessons for their mental wellness. The biggest one, Marquez said, is to remember to count the small things in life.

“A whole bunch of little things can make up one really big thing,” Marquez said. “So if you can count the little things, the little blessings in life, it will help you realize it’s going to be all right.”

Resources for service members and veterans struggling with mental health issues, including 24-hour crisis hotlines, include:

• The Military Crisis Line: call 988, Ext. 1

• Military OneSource: 800-342-9647

• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 — call or text

Article by Caitlyn Burchett, caitlyn.burchett@virginiamedia.com

Tickets: The performances at local military installations are open to base personnel. The performances at Eastern Virginia Medical School and the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk are open to the general public. Those are free to attend, courtesy of a Sentara Health sponsorship, but registration is requested.

Details: To register or for more information, visit the “Every Brilliant Thing” tour page at vastage.org/ebttour. Additional performance dates and locations will be posted to the website. Those interested in booking the tour to come to their location can email ebt@vastage.org.

American Theatre Magazine: The Top 10* Most-Produced Plays of the 2023-24 Season

The Top 10* Most-Produced Plays of the 2023-24 Season

Dramas and comedies with a political edge top this year’s list (*actually 12 due to ties).

OCTOBER 18, 2023

BY ROB WEINERT-KENDT

1. What the Constitution Means to Me by Heidi Schreck (16 productions)

2. Clyde’s by Lynn Nottage (14)

3. POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive by Selina Fillinger (12)

4. The Lehman Trilogy by Stefano Massini, adapted by Ben Power (12)

5. Dial M for Murder adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from Frederick Knott’s original play (9*)

6. Fat Ham by James Ijames (9)

7. The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa FastHorse (8)

8. Beautiful: The Carole King Musical by Douglas McGrath (book), Gerry Goffin & Carole King, Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil (music & lyrics) (8)

9. Sanctuary City by Martyna Majok (8)

10. Cabaret by Joe Masteroff (book), John Kander (music), Fred Ebb (lyrics) (7)

11. Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe (7)

12. The Rocky Horror Show by Richard O’Brien (7)

*In fact there will actually be 10 productions of Dial M for Murder in the coming season, but Norfolk’s Virginia Stage Company will use Knott’s original script rather than the Hatcher adaptation.

Satire is what closes on Saturday night, goes an old theatrical saw, and more recently we’ve heard from some quarters that theatregoers would rather not have politics mixed in with their entertainment. Well, if this year’s list of most-produced plays is any indication, TCG member theatres are banking that that’s not the case—or at least not entirely. As in past years, this list reflects a healthy mix of main course and dessert, of challenge and escape (if you don’t recall, last year’s top three plays were Clyde’s, Chicken & Biscuits, and Clue).

The list starts with three plays by women, all with a political valence: Heidi Schreck’s brilliantly personal yet pointed What the Constitution Means to Me, Lynn Nottage’s sneaky allegory about forgiveness, Clyde’s, and Selina Fillinger’s raucous farce POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive. The list also includes the bravura economic history, The Lehman Trilogy, the blistering satire of “woke” white folks, The Thanksgiving Play, and Martyna Majok’s moving piece about immigration, Sanctuary City. James Ijames’s Fat Ham is arguably a hybrid case—an examination of toxic masculinity and Black manhood that morphs into a dance party (spoiler alert). The rest includes a straight-up mystery (Dial M for Murder, remarkably its first appearance on our lists), the improvisatory play Every Brilliant Thing (its first reappearance on the list since 2019), and substantive musicals: the cautionary Cabaret, the empowering Beautiful, and, in an age of renewed moral panic about drag shows and gender fluidity, the freshly edgy Rocky Horror Show.

These listings were compiled from a total of 1,560 full shows (productions with runs of at least a week) at 558 TCG member theatres all across the U.S. as they appear in our Fall 2023 print issue. (The listings you can see here may not match the printed listings exactly.) It should be noted that the former number is up from last year’s 1,298, though still well short of the roster in the 2019-20 season, which was 2,229. There’s still some recovery in store for U.S. theatres, it’s clear. As usual we excluded productions of A Christmas Carol and plays by Shakespeare from this list. (For the record: This year, the former numbers 43, the latter 40.)

And of course, as meaningful as these lists can be as a snapshot of the industry’s tastes, please don’t skip the many pages of listings in our print edition (or, again, scroll through these listings). To my eyes they paint a picture of a sprawling and thriving American theatre, which we’re grateful to cover, in bad times and good.

Rob Weinert-Kendt (he/him) is the editor-in-chief of American Theatre.

Virginian-Pilot Review: Traditional ‘Fiddler’ on the right roof: Virginia Stage Company nails season opener

By Page Laws

Note: This review was written and submitted before the start of the recent Israel-Hamas war.

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As Tevye the dairyman notes, it is really risky to play the fiddle while perched atop a roof. The title of the great American musical in which he’s the star alludes to Marc Chagall’s painting and the fact that Jews have long had to conduct their religious life and culture under conditions as precarious and nomadic as any people on Earth have had to bear.

So why play fiddle up there, in constant danger of a deadly fall?

Tevye — masterfully performed by John Payonk in Virginia Stage Company’s “Fiddler on the Roof” — answers that with the show’s rousing first number: “Tradition.”

Jewish life has long been balanced between millennia-old religious beliefs and customs that unite the people and the need to grow and change — accepting women, for instance, as fully formed human beings, capable of making their own decisions about, say, marriage partners. Sorry, Yente (the frustrated matchmaker, played by Jacqueline Jones)! Women have rights, too!

So, precarity/change is the theme, and this show’s Tevye is a dream.

Payonk has a booming baritone coupled with operatic finesse and resonance rich enough to raise the roof of Norfolk’s Wells Theatre, especially as stoked by the brand-new sound system (new seats, too). He also has the comic timing of his best Borscht Belt predecessors — a must for carrying on his soliloquies with God and impromptu mangled citations from “The Good Book.” He’s a man blessed and cursed in having five daughters (cursed in that he has no dowry funds to marry them off). But more on his family and supporting cast later.

The pandemic has made times precarious for theater, but it’s not that risky for the VSC to have chosen what some may consider a chestnut of theater repertory. Especially with the show being generously backed by the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater and the Simon Family Jewish Community Center. This first-time producing partnership has also provided top-notch, pre-show lectures by Rabbi Michael Panitz of Temple Israel along with a showing of the film “Fiddler: Miracles of Miracles,” which documents the show’s provenance and even features an interview with this production’s director, Gary John La Rosa — a friend of “Fiddler” lyricist Sheldon Harnick, who died in June. Here La Rosa duplicates the original choreography of Jerome Robbins, with some success. (He has even directed Chaim Topol — the famous Tevye of Norman Jewison’s 1971 film and many subsequent stage incarnations — in a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Broadway version.)

The original source of “Fiddler” is a considerably darker collection of short stories, written about 1894 and later, about Tevye the milkman by Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem. They’re set around 1905 during pogroms in czarist Russia. In 1906 he fled Ukraine — then a region of Russia called the Pale of Settlement, in which Jews were allowed to live — and eventually settled in New York. (As for his name, it’s a pen name, the greeting “Peace be with you”; he was born Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich.)

Some, including Panitz, have called the musical ”Sholem Aleichem Lite,” referring to its assimilationism and relatively benign conclusion: quiet reconciliation between Tevye and his daughter Chava (Amelia Burkley) who has married outside the faith. This is prompted, of course, by the forced scattering of the entire community of the shtetl Anatevka. Panitz’s overall evaluation of the show is, however, far more measured, especially in his scholarly article “Fiddler on a New Roof,” inspired in part by the 2018 Yiddish-language staging with Joel Grey: “Fidler afn Dakh,” which Panitz calls “more frankly ‘Jewish’” in tone.

Most critics agree that “Fiddler” is a canonical, great American musical that belongs in the worldwide repertory. So it’s really a matter of how good a Tevye and supporting cast can be assembled.

In this case, Payonk nails Tevye, and his supporting cast supports him, using the mix upon which many regional theaters rely — namely, imported Actors Equity members (five here), most often for the leads, and more local community actors for the ranks. Tevye’s special imaginary friend, the Fiddler, is played, for example, by Velkassem Agguini, a violinist at the Governor’s School for the Arts, who does some of his own fiddling for the whirling, cavorting, nonspeaking role. Golde, Tevye’s not-so-long-suffering wife, is Eva DeVirgilis. She maintains her kosher home with panache, modeling the proper wife and mother for all she’s worth. Tzeitel (Ally Dods), the eldest daughter, has inherited her mother’s gumption and her father’s almost Socratic nature.

Tzeitel rejects the matchmaker’s choice of Lazar Wolf (Scott Wichmann), the wealthy (by village standards) butcher who’s none too pleased by it. Tzeitel chooses, instead, Motel the tailor (Greg Dragas), dirt poor but rock solid in a crisis. Daughter No. 2, Hodel (Mia Bergstrom), is the family intellectual who chooses another thinker to wed. He’s Perchik, the student revolutionary, well rendered by Nathan Matthew Jacques. It is he who helps the hidebound citizens of Anatevka begin to see that change is coming, and fast. The third daughter, Chava (Burkley), breaks even more definitively with her family and people when she chooses to love a Russian gentile named Fyedka (Timothy Wright).

Other familiar local actors — Matt Friedman as Mordcha the innkeeper, John K. Cauthen as the rabbi, Scott Rollins as the constable — plus a lively handful of child actors (Gavin and Jasper Gayer, Ellie Madelyn Ruffing and Stormie Treviño) round out some of the large cast.

The set and costumes, while solid, look very much like the dozens of touring versions constantly moving across stages worldwide. There are wigs and male facial hair galore, most seemingly in accordance with Jewish custom of the time but some that looked (intentionally?) comical.

Though not directly emphasized in this production, it pays to remember that real Anatevkas in Ukraine may be suffering bombardment as we watch this show or read this newspaper account. Awareness of “Fiddler’s” relevance to the war in Ukraine seems to have somewhat diminished since the last touring production I saw, at the Ferguson in Newport News in March 2022; the cast dedicated it to the people of Ukraine.

But this should not detract from the accomplishment of the two Jewish organizations and Virginia Stage Company in putting on a fine “Fiddler,” starring an admirable Tevye. For that accomplishment in still-precarious times, they deserve a heartfelt ”Mazel tov!”

Announcing Mistletoe Market 2023!

Virginia Stage Company is proud to partner with local artists, artisans, and crafters for its second Seasonal Mistletoe Market to be held prior to Norfolk’s Grand Illumination Parade. The market will feature local artists, artisans, and crafters selling their handmade goods, as well as a bar with warm drinks and snacks, photos with Santa, and children's activities.

The Wells Theatre is downtown Norfolk’s hidden gem–a National Historic building with the original, ornate decoration that is still visible today.

Holiday favorite The Doorway Singers will be caroling down Tazewell and Granby, making their way to and from the Wells.

Come downtown early to grab a good parking spot and to enjoy our local artisan market. No tickets required for entry. If you’re lucky you’ll catch a glimpse of one of our most Infamous Holiday Spirits…The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come!

MISTLETOE MARKET
at Virginia Stage Company

November 18, 2023
Opening at 2:00 PM at the historic Wells Theatre
before The Grand Illumination Parade

VENDORS INCLUDE…

• The VSC Costumers’ Collection

• VSC’s Crystal Tuxhorn (fb) (instagram), fluid art paintings and jewelry

• Setzer Collections (etsy) (fb) (instagram), handmade bows and accessories

• Spring Scott, crochet creations

• LA NEIGE HOME DECOR (website), One of a kind coastal themed ornaments and holiday decor

• Mermaid City Mosaics (fb), Handmade Mosaic Art

• and more!

The Grand Illumination Parade takes place every year, bringing thousands of spectators out to the streets of Downtown Norfolk to take in the beauty, magic, and electric holiday spirit to kick off the season. The theme of this year's parade is Gingerbread Dreams, so get ready to see the streets filled with all things holiday sweets!

Interested in being a Mistletoe Market vendor?

We are currently not taking new vendors, but feel free to email marketing@vastage.org to join the waitlist.