Spotlight: Playwright Joseph Reed Hayes’ “A Slow Ride” Makes Timucua Arts Foundation Debut

Joseph Reed Hayes’ play A Slow Ride examines the often complex relationships between mothers and daughters. Three generations of women take a weekly bus ride to the matriarch’s old home. At first glance, it may seem a somewhat familiar trio – hippie grandmother Jezebel (Katrina Tharin) who claims she kick-started Robert Plant’s career, high-strung mother Susan (Danielle Bouloy) who literally and metaphorically carries the family baggage, and goth teenage daughter Rita (Gabriela Torres) who has had enough of them both. But Hayes tells 90.7’s Nicole Darden Creston that there’s more to each character than meets the eye, and new depths are revealed within all three throughout the play’s journey.

‘A Slow Ride’ is a warmly comic trip

The three women of "A Slow Ride," a new play by Joseph Reed Hayes, are taking a family road trip like no other. Each month, sassy senior Jezebel returns to the home she once shared with her husband, accompanied by her daughter Sue and granddaughter Rita. They don't go in the house — some other family lives there now. And they don't drive. The trio makes their way to Jez's old neighborhood on a public bus. It's a long ride, incorporating a stop at a terminal to switch drivers. A long, slow ride.

The briskness of Hayes' comedy belies the title — it's certainly not slow going for an audience. And there's both poignancy and joy in the way he has cleverly captured the essence of a family's dynamics in this one ritual they share. Hayes has been working on a project titled "13 in 13" in which he's staging a baker's dozen of arts events during the calendar year. The events range from movie screenings to jazz concerts to original theater. He's entering the theater phase of the project now. Much of the comedy of "A Slow Ride" comes from the personality clashes between Jez, a vibrant ex-hippie with memory issues; Sue, a high-strung worrier; and Rita, a sulky goth. Are they based on real women Hayes has known? "Absolutely not … and every woman I've ever known and their relationships," says the Orlando playwright with a hearty laugh.

Hayes has opted for a nontraditional staging. "A Slow Ride" will be presented at the Downtown Credo coffeeshop. The actors will perform at one end of the building, spilling out among the audience. In a sense, the audience will be "on the bus" with the cast. Hayes is no stranger to nontraditional staging: He has previously presented theatrical works in his own living room and broadcast the show live on the Internet. He'll do the same for "A Slow Ride." The performance on Sunday, July 21, will be streamed live at housetheaterproject.com.

Two other plays are yet to come in the "13 in 13" series. September will see a revival of his show "Solos," which played the 2004 Orlando Fringe Festival. "Solos" is about a couple bound together by their devotion to making music. "It is about love, deception and the hardships and joys of the jazz existence," Hayes says. "Solos" will be staged at the Gallery at Avalon Island in downtown Orlando from Sept. 20-23. For the final performance, jazz combo La Lucha will accompany the actors. For December, Hayes is working on an original lighthearted Christmas show that will have a Dickensian twist: Set in 1850s London, someone is stealing the city's Christmas puddings, Hayes previews.

But right now, Hayes is focused on launching "A Slow Ride." He hopes theatergoers — or those watching on their home computers — will find echoes of their own family relationships, male and female, in the show. "It's what I write about," he says. "It's real life."

Live Active Cultures

Summer is usually time to take things slow, but not for multidisciplinary artist Joseph Hayes, Orlando’s self-described “artistic irritant that creates pearls.” His 13in13 Project set the “crazy” goal of producing an original work every four weeks in 2013, and last weekend he debuted the eighth, A Slow Ride, a single-act slice of life featuring three fractured females. Jezebel (Jac LeDoux) is an overly emotive ex-hippie grandma whose obsession with numerology and Woodstock-era reminiscences about Grace Slick and Allen Ginsberg may be signs of incipient Alzheimer’s. Also along for the ride are Sue (Wendy Starkand), Jezebel’s exhausted daughter, who feels like a pre-menopausal tarnished penny; and 17-year-old gloomy goth granddaughter Rita (Kate Lockwood), given to dropping pop-culture references (Nine Inch Nails, cyberpunk) that predate her birth. Hayes’ script steers more toward long, introspective monologues than dramatic action, but his dialogue – which the cast delivered with alacrity – is crisp and quick-witted. The too-soon ending made me wish for a longer journey with these women.

Archikulture Digest

Why pay to sit through a show about a psycho family slugging it out on a bus ride to nowhere? Because unlike Thanksgiving dinner, you pay for the right to leave when it’s over. Riding the bus is a monthly outing for these three women: Grandma Jezebel (Jac LeDoux) is an ex-groupie with Ethel Merman insides a screaming to get out. Her daughter Sue (Wendy Starkand) might be the byproduct of an old Foghat tour, but her DNA lacks the fun gene even if she’s had a secret desire to sing opera all her life. Lastly there’s gothic Rita (Kate Lockwood), she’ so dark she thinks Anton Chekov is funny. The trio bitch and argue, debate the merits of sex, whether grandma is a due for the padded cell and generally terrorize the rest of the invisible riders. It’s a very funny ride, much funnier than the whacko rambling you get on regular public transport, and each of the three women seems born for the role. LeDoux did her best to steal the show; she was loud and raucous and told the audience to get their feet out of her way. Starkand went right from teenager to middle age without any of the fun years; her fervent dream is the ability to get out of a chair without making “That Noise.” Clearly she’s the peacemaker, if no more successful than Henry Kissinger was. Lockwood begins by annoying all of us with here prepackaged angst, but by the last scene she had softened into a whole person with actual feeling and vulnerabilities. There’s plenty of gags and some physical comedy, and even though the action flow behind the audience for some scenes it’s a funny and heartfelt slice of life. You’ll stick around to the end, and think how much nicer your family functions could be with some stage lighting and a good director.