Love is In the Air, on a Trapeze to be Exact

The idea of combining theater with trapeze—as playwright and actress [Carla Cantrelle] attempts to do in Looking Up—was enough to get me excited to trek down to [Theater for the New City](http://www.theaterforthenewcity.net/) for a potential spectacle. I imagined the trapeze could be used in interesting ways: to heighten, undermine or complicate what the characters were saying and what situations they were in. I imagined I would see a play that drew on the physicality, daring and expertise required of a trapeze artist. Unfortunately, the trapeze is used quite literally—as any other prop.

Years ago, Cantrelle wrote a monologue about a trapeze artist, which inspired her to join the [Big Apple Circus] in order to get inside her character’s mind. After Cantrelle learned to be an aerialist, she turned the monologue into Looking Up, a play with two characters and a real trapeze. Cantrelle plays Wendy, a woman who left the circus to perform her trapeze act in bars. In one club, she meets Jack (Bryant Mason) a bartender who knows something about ropes. Wendy does too, of course, and their initial chemistry seems to be based on this shared knowledge. That first night, Jack gives her the key to his apartment, and the two are soon a couple.

Although the relationship takes off, the play doesn’t. Part of the problem is the trapeze, which wasn’t used creatively. Other than the opening monologue—when Wendy first appears on the trapeze to talk about flying—she’s either performing in a bar or practicing in a studio, her location firmly rooted in the context of the scene.

Instead of Cantrelle using the trapeze in unexpected situations—like when she was in Jack’s apartment, for example, sitting on his bed—the literalness of the trapeze is dull. Only Wendy can get on the trapeze—as Jack reinforces, when he tries and fails once in her practice room—and that’s something that could be used as a metaphor for power or escape. The words of the play reinforce the idea of the trapeze as a way of flying and “looking up” ad nauseam, but it should have been used implicitly, too. Wendy needed to do more with the trapeze and less talking about it.

As the play went on, I found myself longing for a breathtaking aerial performance or for the characters to get in a screaming fight. Come on! Throw things at each other! In the final scene, Wendy emphasizes that happy endings do exist. And they do. But in order to appreciate them, there must be contrast. There must be tension and uncertainty, two things this play was lacking.

Looking Up runs through March 2 at [Theater for the New City].

Photo by Jan Meissner