Theater people and academics share two traits: They believe in the moral significance of their calling to the world, which can provide a sense of superiority, but they also feel misunderstood and surrounded, which makes them defensive. As members of a university’s theater department, the characters in the movie Hillary Millernew comedy “Preparation” – Presented by Bushwick Starr and HERE – belong to both constituencies, which means their shoulders sink under rock-size flakes.
That vigilance is warranted, however, as their departments have come under attack from university administrators who want not only to slash their budgets but also to abolish the program altogether.
Figurative and real-life survival get mixed up when an irresistibly chirpy HR rep, Kath (Alison Cimmet), shows up in the episode’s shabby – and certainly not chic – conference-break room. If teachers undergo state-mandated training in how to deal with a potential mass shooting, they will have a better chance of surviving both a gunman and the dean’s delete button.
An assistant professor of English at Queens College and author of books on theatre, Miller is fluent in the quirks and jargon of academia, as well as interdepartmental rivalries – don’t introduce theater professors to their siblings in film and digital technology. It also nails bureaucracies’ love of acronyms, where MeRP (Commitment to Mutual Respect), ACOST (Active Campus Operations Shooter Training) and GOHOHOF (Get Out, Hide, Help, Fight) are deployed in a dizzying alphabet soup. With reference to “FERPP requests” and “FULAP forms”.
Miller and director Kristjan Thor neatly plot the specific genres that pop up in just about every group of educators. Most memorable are the besieged president Jeff (Lou Liberatore), who does her best to save her own department, and Laurette (the wonderful Nora Cole), a majestic woman who tends to explain shawls. comes from the charisma, experience and lofty ideals associated with his profession. “We are theater artists,” he says. “We create sanctuaries to live in!”
As familiar as the edgy, humorless Haydée García-Shelton (Tracy Hazas) who seems to have trouble communicating with her colleagues – she informs them that she’s getting married over the weekend as if it weren’t a big deal. – and despise musicals and their fans. “If you ask these people about my job, they’ll pretend they care and then go back to pushing their GoFundMe for fluffy wigs,” she says. A guess as to who will eventually use pepper spray.
Having this motley group agree on any issue, especially an administrative decision that is perceived as imposition, is akin to herding cats—a gesture to help improve the collapsing morale, unlike the real cats, Cat Blanchett, the department’s new robotic “Stamina Mascot”.
Ultimately, Miller fails to solve a fundamental problem: It is surprising that some of the professors refuse to be educated. Resistance to HR is easy to understand, but a quick training session that both covers a very real concern (mass murder in schools) and saves your finances feels like a gift. And yet they bicker.
Backed into a corner, Miller can’t figure out how to finish the game. That’s why he gives the last word to the retired Laurette in the form of an address to his students. It’s a nice talk and an escape.
preparation
Until December 11, HERE Arts Center, Manhattan; thebushwickstarr.org. Working time: 1 hour 30 minutes.