The Official Website of Bil Wright



"Human Rights Festival 2007" - C. Kish, SDTheatreScene.com Both global in perspective as well as individual suffering and then healing, 9/11 still haunts millions of individuals. Bil Wright's "Leave Me A Message", the first play of the evening, reminds us all that the repercussions of terrorism strike the heart and soul of survivors everyday for the 'rest of their lives'. Their pain may be diminished but it doesn't ever go away. Anthony Hamm does very fine work as the surviving husband, Tommy, a 9/11 victim whose wife has left a final voice message for her famiy. He now has to cope as a single parent, doing his best to provide for a six year old with 'issues'. Rena Lyon plays the part of the wife with just the right touch of fear and anxiety. Wright directs both his players in a way that brings out subtle human failings that underscore our frail connections with family. In the end, it's all about the impossibility of 'letting it go'. Yasmine Beverly Rana's "Blackened Windows" allows two individuals an occasional escape frm the realities of war and governmental, dictatorial, emotional handcuffs. Eric Esquer does competent work as the soldier who befriends a prostitute (Leti Carranza) in what appears to be war torn Iraq. Bil WRight seems to have found the heart and soul of this play as he directes the two characters with subtle moment, allowing them enough space to pull the subtextual emotions to the surface. Rana's writing confronts Muslim dictates (power of man) and underscores the soldier's contradictory acrtions, all-the-while giving up a poetic landscape that covers her story much like the black paint covers the windows in her prison-like apartment. She seems to suggest that it's nothing more than a dark, unbeautiful dream where reality is a step outside her door. The play is more than just a liason of flesh; it's anger over a buried child that could have been saved and more. There was much good territory covered in the short span of this play. Hopefully we'll see more of Rana's work in the future. All three plays surfaced high emotion ina short breath of minutes, creating believeable characters which underscored the ravages of war and/or intended terrorism. These three plays runningn collectively for about sixty minuts, clearly underscored the resilience of the human sprirt and gave us some hope for a brighter, if not perfect, future. "Survival of the Fittest" - Pat Launer, SDTheatreScene.com THE SHOW: Programs 10 and 11 of 6 @ Penn Theatre's Resilience of the Spirit Human Rights Festival proved to be the strongest evenings of the Festival I've seen. The plays are powerful and provocative, and the performances uniformly excellent. All deal with the creative ways desperate humans attempt to survive a traumatic event, whether it's using art, sex or one-way conversations with the dead. There was a little backstage drama in presenting Program 10: one of the scheduled plays was dropped, so in a pinch, director/actor/playwright/novelist/ teacher Bil Wright stepped up and quickly (in a day or two) penned a short replacement piece, which he called "Leave Me A Message". The short playlet is a reflection on grief: how long it should last, when it's time to let go. One year after 9/11, a husband can't erase his wife's final phone message, a frantic attempt to connect with him in her final moments. He's having trouble with a recalcitrant daughter and an overbearing shrink. He only takes comfort in talking into the answering machine, where the last vestige of his wife still 'resides'. Under Wright's direction, Rena Lyon (a newcomer to San Diego) gradually unfolds her mounting terror, and Anthony Hamm does an impressive job as the broken hearted husband. Wright directs the evening's second piece as well, "War Zone Is My Bed (Blackened Windows)" by New Orleans-born Yasmine Berly Rana. This play, which was presented as a concert reading at New York's La MaMa Experimental Theatre, where it will have a full production in the fall, was published in this summer's issue of The Drama Review. An arts therapist, the playwright has worked with traumatized and displaced people in various countries. Her play is set in a 'brutally strange place,' an unnamed Middle Eastern land under strict moral law. It's told as an anguished memory, the recollections of a man who recalls none of the dates and details of his overseas ordeal, only the blackened windows of the boxed-in life of one widow forced to earn a meager living on her back. He became a 'regular', and in each other's arms they found a moment of respite, release and humanity -- until she finds out that this gentle, tender lover is one of the torturers she so fears. Wright has teased touching, aching, finely shaded performances from Eric Esquer and Leti Carranza. (Now let's just hope he manages to return again from New York, in order to reprise his stellar performance as Gabe in "Fences", which will be mounted as a full production by Cygnet Theatre in late fall.)

"Human Rights Festival 2007"
- C. Kish, SDTheatreScene.com

Both global in perspective as well as individual suffering and then healing, 9/11 still haunts millions of individuals. Bil Wright's "Leave Me A Message", the first play of the evening, reminds us all that the repercussions of terrorism strike the heart and soul of survivors everyday for the 'rest of their lives'. Their pain may be diminished but it doesn't ever go away. Anthony Hamm does very fine work as the
surviving husband, Tommy, a 9/11 victim whose wife has left a final voice message for her famiy. He now has to cope as a single parent, doing his best to provide for a six year old with 'issues'. Rena Lyon plays the part of the wife with just the right touch of fear and anxiety. Wright directs both his players in a way that brings out subtle human failings that underscore our frail connections with family. In the end, it's all about the impossibility of 'letting it go'.

Yasmine Beverly Rana's "Blackened Windows" allows two individuals an occasional escape frm the realities of war and governmental, dictatorial, emotional handcuffs. Eric Esquer does competent work as the soldier who befriends a prostitute (Leti Carranza) in what appears to be war torn Iraq. Bil WRight seems to have found the heart and soul of this play as he directes the two characters with subtle moment, allowing them enough space to pull the subtextual emotions to the surface. Rana's writing confronts Muslim dictates (power of man) and underscores the soldier's contradictory acrtions, all-the-while giving up a poetic landscape that covers her story much like the black paint covers the windows in her prison-like apartment. She seems to suggest that it's nothing more than a dark, unbeautiful dream where reality is a step outside her door. The play is more than just a liason of flesh; it's anger over a buried child that could have been saved and more. There was much good territory covered in the short span of this play. Hopefully we'll see more of Rana's work in the future.

All three plays surfaced high emotion ina short breath of minutes, creating believeable characters which underscored the ravages of war and/or intended terrorism. These three plays runningn collectively for about sixty minuts, clearly underscored the resilience of the human sprirt and gave us some hope for a brighter, if not perfect, future.

"Survival of the Fittest"
- Pat Launer, SDTheatreScene.com

THE SHOW: Programs 10 and 11 of 6 @ Penn Theatre's Resilience of the Spirit Human Rights Festival proved to be the strongest evenings of the Festival I've seen. The plays are powerful and provocative, and the performances uniformly excellent. All deal with the creative ways desperate humans attempt to survive a traumatic event, whether it's using art, sex or one-way conversations with the dead. There was a little backstage drama in presenting Program 10: one of the scheduled plays was dropped, so in a pinch, director/actor/playwright/novelist/ teacher Bil Wright stepped up and quickly (in a day or two) penned a short replacement piece, which he called "Leave Me A Message".

The short playlet is a reflection on grief: how long it should last, when it's time to let go. One year after 9/11, a husband can't erase his wife's final phone message, a frantic attempt to connect with him in her final moments. He's having trouble with a recalcitrant daughter and an overbearing shrink. He only takes comfort in talking into the answering machine, where the last vestige of his wife still 'resides'. Under Wright's direction, Rena Lyon (a newcomer to San Diego) gradually unfolds her mounting terror, and Anthony Hamm does an impressive job as the broken hearted husband.

Wright directs the evening's second piece as well, "War Zone Is My Bed (Blackened Windows)" by New Orleans-born Yasmine Berly Rana. This play, which was presented as a concert reading at New York's La MaMa Experimental Theatre, where it will have a full production in the fall, was published in this summer's issue of The Drama Review. An arts therapist, the playwright has worked with traumatized and displaced people in various countries. Her play is set in a 'brutally strange place,' an unnamed Middle Eastern land under strict moral law. It's told as an anguished memory, the recollections of a man who recalls none of the dates and details of his overseas ordeal, only the blackened windows of the boxed-in life of one widow forced to earn a meager living on her back. He became a 'regular', and in each other's arms they found a moment of respite, release and humanity -- until she finds out that this gentle, tender lover is one of the torturers she so fears. Wright has teased touching, aching, finely shaded performances from Eric Esquer and Leti Carranza. (Now let's just hope he manages to return again from New York, in order to reprise his stellar performance as Gabe in "Fences", which will be mounted as a full production by Cygnet Theatre in late fall.)