Urbanite stages Claire Kiechel’s outer space drama ‘Pilgrims’

It’s a play about gender, about post-traumatic stress disorder, about the way human beings think about the history and the future of colonization, about solitude and socialization, and about very different people who are forced to get to know and deal with each other.

And, as playwright Claire Kiechel put it in an interview before its premiere, “It happens to be on a spaceship.”

The play is called “Pilgrims,” and it’s the next production from Sarasota’s Urbanite Theatre. Its six-week run opens Friday.

It’s directed by Carl Forsman. It’s his first show for Urbanite, but local audiences may recall his work with Asolo Repertory Theatre, including an acclaimed and popular production of “Glengarry G’en Ross” a few years back. He’s directed an Obie Award-winning production and for five years he’s been the dean of the School of Drama at the prestigious North Carolina School of the Arts. (He’s stepped down as dean, but he remains on the faculty there.)

Brendan Ragan, the co-artistic director of Urbanite, said: “Carl Forsman is probably our most accomplished director to date, and we’re very lucky to have him.”

Forsman feels lucky to be here, too. He said he’s relieved to be stepping away from the rigors of academia for a while and get back to directing the kind of theater he loves: challenging, thought-provoking and entertaining work in a black box theater.

Playwight Kiechel may downplay the idea that “Pilgrims” is essentially sci-fi, but Forsman doesn’t.

“I’m going to say that it is a sci-fi play,” he said, “for the fact that it exists so comfortably in the sci-fi milieu. ‘Pilgrims’ is a play about a spaceship that is traveling from earth to bring colonists to a far-away planet.”

In fact, it was the sci-fi aspect of the script that first intrigued him. Forsman has a friend who works at Urbanite and the friend sent Forsman an email with the subject line, “Have you ever directed a play set in outer space?”

That got him to read the script and from the start, Kiechel’s words and idea had him hooked.

The characters are a 27-year-old soldier and a 16-year-old girl, both of whom have some heavy secrets. They’re forced to share a stateroom on the interplanetary ship, and because of a potential danger on board, they’re confined to the room. A robot shares the space with them.

It’s set centuries in the future, but “Pilgrims,” Forsman said, is immediate. The two human characters resist getting to know each other, but eventually have to recount their traumatic histories in order to survive their situation.

“That’s the great thing,” he said. “(Kiechel) is using the milieu to talk about very contemporary issues. It’s about two people who are trying to connect. And connection is sort of why we’re all here.”

Details: Aug. 4-Sept. 10, Urbanite Theatre, 1487 Second St., Sarasota. 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. $29; under 40 (with ID) $20; students (with ID) $5. 941-321-1397, urbanitetheatre.com.

This story was originally published August 2, 2017 at 5:03 PM with the headline "Urbanite stages Claire Kiechel’s outer space drama ‘Pilgrims’."