LOS ANGELES — Theater magic is on full display in Culver City and not just because a quartet of teens is trying to summon the spirit of Pablo Escobar.
They have their reasons, but the real alchemy in “Our Dear Dead Drug Lord” is within the characters themselves, as they are transforming from girlhood to womanhood.
“It’s a really fun, emotional roller coaster,” said actor Samantha Miller. “Kind of like being a teenage girl.”
The four girls evolve before the audience’s eyes, giving what the young actors say is an accurate and rarely seen viewpoint of what being a teenage girl is like — an authenticity the group appreciates.
“It’s so exciting and refreshing,” Ashley Brooke, who plays Zoom, explained.
“I really do think [playwright Alexis Scheer] does an incredible job at capturing the excitement of teenage years and what it feels like to be living in a body when you don’t really know exactly what you want to be yet or who you are.”
“When you’re young, you don’t know what is and isn’t okay to be,” added Lilian Rebelo, who is making her west coast debut at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. “Like, finding that in yourself… the good and the bad, and how they have to coexist for you to be like a full human.”
Coral Peña, who plays Kit, points out that coming-of-age stories are more often told from the male perspective.
“I think there is an important part of growing from girl to woman that doesn’t really get touched on a lot,” she said. “This holds all the difficult parts of being a girl but also the joyful parts of being a girl and the hard part of the loss of innocence and what that looks like.”
“There’s a certain type of teenage girl that we see over and over and over again,” Miller, who recently appeared in “Stew,” at the Pasadena Playhouse, added. “But we don’t get to see how angry they get. We don’t get to see how devastated they get. We don’t get to see them from the light that they see themselves and that we got to experience growing up. So I think it’s really important that we get to see these young women who are not quite women yet.”
Listening to the girls talk, it’s hard not to notice a series of contradictions and that’s exactly what attracted director Lindsay Allbaugh to “Our Dear Dead Drug Lord.” When she first read the piece a few years ago, she immediately fell under its spell, moving it to the pile of plays she wanted to work on.
“I’m drawn to material that’s about women, that’s about young women, that’s about how hard it is to be a young woman, that there’s dark and light in all of us,” she explained. “I mean, it also made me laugh a lot, too.”
The stage at the Kirk Douglas has been transformed into an elaborate treehouse that the girls inhabit. It’s a magical space, a kind of dream house and while the show may sounds nothing like the Barbie movie, it does contain a lot of the same themes expertly voiced by America Ferrera in her climactic, contradiction-laden speech about how it’s “literally impossible to be a woman.”
“We live in a patriarchy. Everything that we do down to the smallest tasks are made for and made by men,” Allbaugh explained. “And so really exploring what would a world look like if women were powerful? What would it look like if little girls were taught to take what they wanted, to be loud, to be angry? What it would look like if women truly embraced all parts of ourselves, and didn’t listen to what society was telling us that we had to be?”
“I don’t know,” she concluded. “I think society would look really different.”
This is the final show of the Kirk Douglas Theatre’s 2022-2023 season.
It’s also the first play produced by Center Theatre Group since they announced the pause at the Mark Taper Forum.
The Douglas, their smallest venue, is about to undergo some changes, too. Allbaugh, who is also CTG’s Associate Artistic Director says the company, under the leadership of newly minted Artistic Director Snehal Desai, is exploring a new model of programming at the venue that will include shorter runs, more family programming, possibly the transfer of shows from other spaces around town and more collaborations, like this show which was co-produced by IAMA Theatre Company, a female led company that Allbaugh was eager to work with.
It’s a time of crisis for theaters across the country and she feels collaboration will be a key to survival.
“I think it’s vital that theaters are coming together and working together and sharing resources,” Allbaugh said. “There may be a play that has a larger cast or has a larger production need. You bring two or three companies together and you can accomplish that in a way where you’re able to financially afford it and you’re able to artistically have the bandwidth to do it.”
Of course, for all its girl power, Pablo Escobar does loom large over “Our Dear Dead Drug Lord” — both figuratively and literally.
As for his role in the action, Miller isn’t talking.
“Don’t ask questions as to why we have a giant poster, Pablo Escobar!” she said, his face staring over her shoulder from the wall behind her. “You’re gonna have to come and see the show.”