Hurricane Diane opens like an ancient Greek stage play. The perpetual character Diane comes out from the audience entrance in a gold gown and a leaf-made diadem on her head. She walks into the circular stage that sits before a barely lit setting that resembles a suburban kitchen. What starts as a comedic monologue quickly turns into an angry rant directed at the audience.
In the award-winning 2017 play, the Greek demigod of agriculture, Dionysus, takes the form of a permaculture gardener named Diane for a cul-de-sac of four women in a New Jersey suburban neighborhood in the hopes of acquiring new followers and ending the climate-change apocalypse.
The production is being performed at University of Illinois Springfield for two weekends. I attended Nov. 2, and it was a great time. The show carried a serious message, poignant today more than ever, through a funny script and powerful performances.
Diane, played by UIS staffer Amanda Lazzara, is dynamic, switching quickly from a joyous and seductive attention-seeking god to an angry and spiteful god. Carol, the resistant corporate housewife played by Hannah Curran, called her “your typical Karen,” who talks like she’ll die if she says what she wants to say. Beth, played by UIS student Joy Brown, is a quiet, nervous woman who Brown described as “repressive,” but who soon tries to find herself after her husband left her. Aria Woods, a UIS student who played Renee, an editor for HGTV magazine who Woods described as “strong-willed” and “passionate about what she does.” Finally there is Pam, played by UIS student Dakota Kitson, who Kitson described as “my Italian aunt from New Jersey who drinks too much wine and yells when you break a spaghetti in half.”
The director of the production, Missy Thibodeaux-Thompson, a UIS faculty member since 2006, spent the spring looking for the fall play with her coworkers Dathan Powell and Eric Thibodeaux-Thompson. Not until she went to a theater conference in Connecticut did she see a production of Hurricane Diane and was completely amazed.
Thibodeaux-Thompson also said that the play is an avenue not only for entertainment but for engagement.
“For the potential of social change, the potential to make our audience stop and think, ‘Oh, what are we doing to this planet?’,” Thibodeaux-Thompson said. ” …I want people to leave with the idea of listening to one another, of listening to each other, listening to what the planet is telling us.”
The director then pointed to the hurricanes that devastated the South a month ago as a sign that we must make changes in our own lives.
“Two names I am going to mention, Helene and Milton, that just happened in the past month,” Thibodeaux-Thompson said. “Those hurricanes, that’s the Earth trying to tell us something. What are we going to do about it, what can we do about it? And the play tells us that we as human beings don’t have to do everything, we don’t have to make ginormous, huge changes. Sometimes it can be small things and if enough of us do that small thing, then maybe that can help.”
With climate change and sustainability being so important to the play, Thibodeaux-Thompson hired UIS biology professor and ecologist Dr. Amy McEuen as the dramaturg. She would spend months researching Greek mythology, botany and sustainability.
“Even if it seems small, we don’t all have to do the same things,” McEuen said “We all have different skill sets, we all have different things we enjoy doing. So, it’s about trying to figure out what’s your piece of solving the climate crisis and how we can come together as a community and hopefully not be too overwhelming in solving those problems.”
The effect of climate change affected the cast and how some portrayed their role.
“As we were in the midst of rehearsals, we had the hurricanes. That opened my eyes and I started doing more research. That was able to feed into the panic as my character,” Kitson said.
Lazzara has been a vegan for a decade, partly on account of the effect meat production has on climate.
“We are only one person but when we connect with all other single people, who think and act the same way we do, we can actually effect change,” Lazzara said.
The show continues Nov. 7 to Nov. 9, starting at 7:30 pm. You can purchase tickets at the UIS ticket office on the first floor of UIS Performing Arts Center or call 217-206-6160 to learn more.
Cesar Toscano graduated from Columbia Chicago with a B.A. in creative writing and found love for journalism during his last year of college editing for the Columbia Chronicle. He is currently studying in the Public Affairs Reporting program at University of Illinois Springfield.
This article appears in This I believe Illinois.
