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Stage

A breezy tailspin

The crosscurrents provided by a carefree friend and a grounded lover help a young man launch his dreams in The March of the Kitefliers.

By MARTY CLEAR
Published August 4, 2005

The new Jobsite Theater show, The March of the Kitefliers, is slated to run for just three weeks, but it has been in rehearsal for more than a year.

Playwrights Shawn Paonessa and Neil Gobioff are both Jobsite regulars, and several of their previous collaborations, including Learning Swerve and The Acropolis Project (written with Chris Holcom), have been staged by Jobsite in seasons past.

So even when the play was in its formative stages, when it was being tweaked and honed in workshops, essentially the same cast of Jobsite regulars who will be in this weekend's premiere production were all involved.

The actors have been living with this play, their characters and each other a whole lot longer than usual. Director Kari Keller said familiarity hasn't bred contempt.

"We've definitely had a really, really great time," Keller said. "This has been a fantastic process."

For playwrights Paonessa and Gobioff, Kitefliers is something of a departure. They've been known for somewhat darker work, including a segment in Murder Ballads, a show built around a Nick Cave album.

"Kitefliers is a romantic comedy," Gobioff said. "We wanted to do something that was a little different this time, something that would surprise people coming from us."

The play was born when Paonessa came up with the central character of Sam, a young man who's torn between his artistic and practical sides. His need to be creative and his desire for financial success pull him in opposite directions. The duality is embodied by his carefree best friend and by the more grounded Julia, with whom he falls in love early in the play.

"The title refers to an idea in the play that you can't fly a kite to be happy," Keller said. "You have to be happy to fly a kite, which in turn makes you happy."

Kitefliers is a departure for Paonessa because it will be the first time he has performed in a play he co-wrote.

"He auditioned for it like everybody else," Keller said. "If anything, I was trying not to cast him, but when I had him read with the other actors who were trying out, all the casting just fell right into place. And he just knew Sam so intimately that he brought another dimension to the role."

Keller said that even though the process of developing the play has been a long one, the cast has kept the material fresh. One reason may be that Keller, who was trained and worked with Second City in Los Angeles, has a strong background in improvisation and has encouraged the cast to be loose and creative during rehearsals.

She also credits Meg Heimstead, a Jobsite newcomer and the only cast member who hasn't been involved with Kitefliers since the beginning, with enlivening the production and the process.

"Our original Julia moved away, and Meg stepped in and she has done a fantastic job," Keller said. "We were so fortunate. I don't think we could have found anyone better."

PREVIEW: The March of the Kitefliers, Aug. 5-21 in the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center's Shimberg Playhouse. $16.50 plus service charge. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays. Tickets for tonight's preview performance are $10. Call 813 229-7827 or go to www.tbpac.org

[Last modified August 3, 2005, 10:07:07]