REVIEWS/PREVIEWS
Autistic License' is moving theater experience
Loyal Fairman
—Council Bluffs Nonpareil
Published: Thursday, March 10, 2011 11:52 AM CST
OMAHA – Stacey Dinner-Levin, a Jewish writer, chronicles her life with her autistic son in her play “Autistic License.” What was really nice about enjoying this play last Saturday night at SNAP! Productions was that the playwright was in the audience just a couple rows in front of me. After the two-hour production, she sat on the stage with the director M. Michelle Phillips and answered questions and spoke about her life and writing the play.
It was a fantastic journey into what all parents fear. In the play, no one has names. Her role was just called mom and her son was just called child.
Michal Simpson played her child from his earliest years to his teen years. Quite fascinating watching a grown man play an autistic child. It worked very well and Simpson gave an incredible performance. Echelle Childers played his mom. She was very good as she handled the frustration and the happy moments very well.
The entire cast was good and included veteran actors: Matt Allen in multiple roles, Therese Rennels as the psychologist, Emily Jane Thompson, Gina Marie Wagner, David Maineli (the dad), and Jerry Evert.
The son at a young age showed symptoms that something was wrong with him. They didn’t know what it was. His verbal skills were lacking but he was able to do things that most kids don’t do at that age. The parents hoped things would change. The psychologist informed them that the boy had a type of autism. This show was very enlightening and I realized there are many kinds of autism.
The boy loved to watch television at an early age and inhaled the information that was on game shows. Some of his first words were “Bob Barker.”
This was a very good and unique production. The play had lots of laughs along with the serious content of the play. Today, the son is 21 years old.
“Autistic License” runs through March 27 at 3225 California St. in Omaha. Tickets are $15 for adults, and $12 for students, seniors. Special Thursday night pricing is $10 for all seats. Curtain is at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, and 6 p.m. on Sundays except for March 27, when the curtain will be at 2 p.m. For tickets, call the box office at (402) 341.2757.
– Reviewer Loyal Fairman can be reached at lfairman@woodbinetwiner.com.
Autistic License
weloco.net
I know autism. We met about 4 years ago and we have since become closer than I could ever thought possible. I didn’t see it coming, but I was also not shocked when it arrived. My mom has autism. And this is why I went to see SNAP! Production’s Omaha premier of Stacey Dinner-Levin’s autobiographical play. And you should see it too. Even if you don’t know anyone with autism, don’t know anything about autism, and maybe don’t really care about autism. You should see this play for two reasons: to support a grassroots theatre company, and because you have a soul.*
*If you don’t have a soul, you can go ahead and skip this post.
The brilliance of this play is in its simplicity. The play follows a typical family as they navigate through the emotional roller coaster of having an autistic child. Autistic License is therapeutic. It’s layered with conflict, humor, and such brutal sensitivity that even the most disillusioned theatergoer might just tear up (I’m not naming names, but I might be talking about myself). Though the subject of the play is autism, the message is universal: LOVE. We must love our family. Yes, even when they aren’t normal and perfect.
Because I’m not a theatre critic, I don’t intend to give a comprehensive review of the actors, design, direction, etc. I will say that it is plainly clear that the entire team approached this play with tremendous respect. This subject matter can be quite controversial and is one of the “hot button” topics of health related issues. It can also be an exhausting subject that “other” people have to deal with. Why would you want to sit through a play about an incurable diagnosis? Doesn’t autism only affect parents of young children and loud-mouthed comedians like Jenny McCarthy?
So I close with a request. Please go see this play. And if you cannot, please visit the playwright’s website at www.autisticlicenseplay.com and take a few minutes to learn about it. Autism may never touch your life. But if it does, this play should be in your back pocket.
The Deets:
What: Autistic License
Where: SNAP! Productions at the Shelterbelt Theatre, 3225 California Street
When: Now – March 27th
weLOCO rates this play for PG-13 due to some “grown up” language.
weLOCO tips: Reserve your tickets as seating is extremely limited. Head down early and grub on some burritos and tots at California Taco.
—-brought to you by Wendy
Autistic License
BY WARREN FRANCKE
The Reader
It’s 10 minutes before the start of Autistic License and a vaguely familiar face in the lobby belongs to a woman texting on her phone. “Are you Stacey?” the nosy reviewer asks, and she smiles affirmatively.
Stacey Dinner-Levin came down from Minneapolis to see again — “I can’t count the times,” she says — her play about raising an autistic child: the early confusion, scary diagnosis, then all the joys and sorrows of living in interesting times. She sat beside director M. Michele Phillips, her friend from a book club. Michele had attended one of the triumphant times, Geordy’s bar mitzvah.
And she greeted Michal Simpson’s performance in the SNAP! Productions play with hearty laughter as he progressed from a 2-year-old who could read the Sunday newspaper ads, from the toddler who exclaimed, “Bob Barker,” and “Come on down” and “a new car” to the 7-year-old who ran away in a red fez, disguised as the invisible man.
She enjoyed the boy and his younger brother in top hats, dancing with canes and singing “Putting on the Ritz” ala Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle as his friendly Frankenstein monster. Then she watched him becoming a man as he recited Hebrew at his bar mitzvah.
We watched with her as a lifetime of parenting ups and downs unfolded: meetings with a psychologist, played superbly by Therese Rennels (Don’t you love it when a talented performer disappears completely into a well-written character?), angry curses from her husband as their son renames his computer files, sharing with support groups, rushing to the emergency room over a swallowed marble.
You wonder how she feels when Echelle Childers portrays her best and worst, and when David Mainelli shows her husband’s anger as well as his love. She’s seen her husband play the boy on stage and she’s seen her son play himself.
But, make no mistake, playgoers didn’t need the playwright’s presence to find joy in her story. One could quibble about some artificial exposition — such as facts about autism revealed in a lecture device — but any flaws were heavily outweighed by the realistic family scenes.
SNAP Productions’ Autistic License runs through March 27 at 3225 California St. with showtimes at 8 p.m. Thurs.-Sat. and 6 p.m. Sundays except for the 2 p.m. final performance. More info at snapproductions.com.
An honest, yet comical, look at struggles of raising autistic child
BY BOB FISCHBACH
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Stacey Dinner-Levin didn’t want to write a play about the experience of parenting her autistic son, Geordy. At least, not at first. She kept telling husband Michael Paul Levin, a professional actor in Minneapolis, that he should write it.
“He’d say, ‘I’m too close to it, and I can’t do it.”
But the material was too good, Dinner-Levin said.
“You couldn’t make this stuff up: comical, terrifying, tragic.”
So she wrote it herself.
“Autistic License” is opening at SNAP Productions tonight at least partly because director M. Michele Phillips saw it while living in Minneapolis a few years ago. She and Dinner-Levin belonged to the same book club.
“I was expecting it to be depressing and angst-ridden,” Phillips said. “I couldn’t have been more wrong. Upbeat, funny, sometimes tough but always enjoyable — it’s structured a bit like an interview of a movie star on the ‘Actors Studio’ TV series with James Lipton. Stacey used to fantasize about what it would be like to be interviewed by him, since she was leading a pretty dramatic life.”
About one in every 150 kids today is diagnosed with some form of autism, yet the causes remain a mystery. It’s a brain disorder characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior.
Geordy was diagnosed at age 2. He’s now 21, living at home, and has brothers ages 18, 14 and 11.
“He’s pretty severely autistic,” Dinner-Levin said. “He’s not going to live independently, though he loves to be in the community and people like him. The play wouldn’t be what it is if it weren’t for his personality.”
Neither a Greek tragedy, nor a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, she said, the play presents both the joy and struggle she and Michael have had in parenting Geordy.
“Some of what I wrote is real honest,” she said. “I didn’t want to sugarcoat it. This is a struggle, but I’m crazy about my kid. I had some really tough things to say in this play.
But I’ve had mothers and fathers tell me I said out loud what they were thinking. The play has all that, and the fun and the charm, too.”
Dinner-Levin will be at Friday and Saturday’s performances to talk with audience members after the show.
Dinner-Levin
F-J-B-Q-E-T
A rose is a rose is a rose with SNAP!'s "Autistic License"
By David Williams
Published on March 6, 2011
Omaha.net
He could read almost before he could speak. The infant who had not yet seen the flicker of a second candle on his birthday cake could chirp “Target,” “Kmart,” and “Save big money at Menards” when leafing through the Sunday supplements.
But the letter ‘d’ gave him nightmares, and, despite his fluency with the printed word, his alphabet blocks could only form a nonsensical ‘F-J-B-Q-E-T.’
The boy known simply as ‘Child’ in Stacey Dinner-Levin’s Autistic License is the now 21-year-old Geordy, the autistic son of the Minneapolis playwright whose play continues through March 27 in a SNAP! Productions run at the Shelterbelt Theatre.
Like Churchill’s famous description of Russia, the world of autism is a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
A fitting choice for the company whose mission is to “promote understanding and acceptance of all members of the community through artistic expression,” Autistic License is a tender and surprisingly funny look at the condition found in almost one percent of the population.
Michal Simpson is magnetic as the boy who channels Fred Astaire, William Shatner, Bob Barker and a familiar feline in a trademark hat through adventures that are equal parts heartwarming and heartbreaking. As is the case with every production of the play, an adult plays the child.
David Mainelli, coming off playing a smarmy, self-absorbed cad in the company’s recent Loose Knit, is strong as the boy’s father who sometimes struggles with the sacrifices of parenting a special needs child.
Best of all is Echelle Childers (pictured above with Michal Simpson) as Mom, especially when addressing the audience in gut-wrenchingly honest—and not always flattering— autobiographical soliloquies. Some of the night’s most comic moments come through unintentionally hilarious banter with 911 operators when her son has wandered off in the guise of the Invisible Man or Willy Wonka.
Autism, Dinner-Levin tells us through her character, can be akin to “a death with no funeral,” but it can also be a path to a deeper understanding of our own humanity and what it means to love unconditionally.
Autistic License triumphs on many levels, but is not without its faults.
One needn’t limn each and every petal of a rose in order to suggest its beauty. The playwright must here flirt with the clinical without succumbing to the cloying, and the work must find its power without yielding to the pedantic.
The overall affect is strong, but sometimes teeters precariously close to the precipice. With a run time of under just two hours, this work is shorter than many nights at the theater, but I can’t escape the feeling that a 90-minute version would make a somehow greater, “less-is-more” impact.
“What a perfect ending,” thought I as the music swelled during what I took then (and still believe now) to be the play’s most climactic moment. But I had erred. There were several scenes still to follow.
Too many ‘petals’ on this one? Perhaps, but nothing alters the fact that a rose is a rose is a rose.
Director M. Michele Phillips’ Autistic License, succeeds not only as an unusually touching “cause” piece, but also as a larger work, one with broader themes that speak to how happiness is a choice regardless of our circumstances, a gift that is there for the taking.
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