171522021
Always yearning to understand her place in the world, Tina Brock experienced an epiphany years ago when attending a staging of “The Chairs” by Eugene Ionesco. Declaring “I get this” when viewing the play, the resident of the 800 block of Kimball Street looked to situate herself among fellow fanatics of provocative existential pieces and decided “learning to bake it myself” would offer the best means for navigating through uncertainty. Now a bona fide buff of the Theatre of the Absurd, she is enjoying a figurative feast as the director of the Romanian writer’s “Rhinoceros,” a FringeArts Festival entry running through Sunday.
“It’s a grand, deep play with so many issues,” the 55-year-old said of the 1959 creation that addresses such topics as conformity and loyalty through characters’ transformations into rhinoceroses. “When I think of all the confusion in our lives and wonder what’s happening to people, it takes on even more significance for contemporary audiences.”
The Bella Vista inhabitant is helming the action for the Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium, which she co-founded in 2006 and strengthens as its producing artistic director. “Rhinoceros” marks her seventh Ionesco production, with the Adrienne Theatre-situated study of “the contagion of anxiety” helping her to buck conceptions of its genre’s intentions.
“Ionesco and his peers have a reputation as nihilistic, depressing figures, but I don’t see them as that,” Brock said of the scribes, whose output analyzes quests for answers when one’s desires for power and perfection fail. “We’re going to lose quite often, but we must realize what we can gain from being diligent. For that reason, I see ‘Rhinoceros’ as being understandable on a very basic level, especially in a place like Philadelphia.”
The admirer of attempts at escaping angst had contemplated presenting the play for four years, finally seeing it as a necessary component of discussions on commitment, namely, how true people are to their beliefs and how unwavering their responsibilities to others prove. Deeming herself “an anxious person” who has engaged in promising practices to acquire contentment, she confessed “Rhinoceros” and similar calls for constancy, no matter the consequences, enable her to connect with the universe and forge a fiercer sense of self.
“This is a text- and idea-heavy work,” Brock said of the three-act effort. “It’s been my job and that of my colleagues to make it very visceral and shatter narrow notions of what Absurdism can teach us about ourselves and others.”
Relying on Ionesco’s mindset that theater should aim to put on stage what is inexpressible through any other form, she appreciates the inherent surplus of struggle within the script yet hopes, like her experience with “The Chairs,” patrons see sanity lurking even when life’s descent seems in the ascendancy.
“I think we all want to understand our place in the world,” Brock said. “We’re looking for our special purpose while battling so many odds, even ones we create for ourselves. We take on so many influences in our lives, and theater is a lasting one for mine.”
The Missouri native, who has resided in South Philly for 13 years, enjoyed dance and ballet as a child and produced backyard-based artistic gatherings as a junior high school student. Feeling as if a creative calling were in her blood, she pursued journalistic and theatrical distinction at the University of Maryland, adding speech communication work at West Chester University and graduate psychology endeavors at Rutgers University. Gaining invaluable awareness of social engagement through employment with WHYY, she also coveted copious exposure to theater and has championed her childhood aspirations by becoming a much-respected freelance actress.
“With regards to my road now, I was being cast as the absurd neighbor or the silly friend,” Brock said of tracing her traction. “Absurdism came to be very important to my formation as an artist, something that I’m definitely still thrilled about working on, along with becoming a more cognizant director.”
The dual presence, whose local credits include roles for Arden Theatre and Philadelphia Theatre companies; Azuka Theatre; Luna Theater, 620 S. Eighth St.; and Theatre Exile, 1340 S. 13th St., set to her introspective and collective endeavors in earnest eight years ago through the formation of the Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium, which derives its name from a diagnosis she received while working as a standardized patient. Brock confessed the troupe initially held few expectations, holding “Let’s see if they come” as its motto when preparing for its inaugural show at the now-defunct Spark Festival. Having parted with that minimalist mindset years ago, she and her allies have, as their website contends, determined to ask ticket buyers “to allow themselves to engage in and commit to the event with the hopeful result of shedding personal and collective light on the difficult questions we face today.”
“That’s not always a task for the faint of heart,” Brock divulged, adding that making threads among themes and analyzing common conundrums among performers and patrons assist her in taming the beast of her anxiety. “As life unfolds, we often become too reactionary because we can come to think about what the purpose is in planning when we really have so little control. The point is to keep looking for security.”
Artistically needing to say something about people’s desires to feel fertile instead of fruitless, the figure, who also works as a case developer for the National Board of Medical Examiners, believes “Rhinoceros” can provide a profitable prescription for gaining balance and realizing that personal depth can yield communal improvement.
“I’m still learning how to run the company,” Brock, with interest in Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame” and “Waiting for Godot” as possible projects, said. “There’s so much more to say about and learn from great works."
For tickets, visit idiopathicridiculopathyconsortium.org.
Contact Managing Editor Joseph Myers at jmyers@southphillyreview.com or ext. 124. Comment at southphillyreview.com/news/lifestyles.
Rhino Group Photo by Johanna Austin (www.austinart.org)
171522021
171521891
