Gender benders
Gender bending abounds in stage adaptation of Tarantino cult classic
Sara and John Cruncleton will tell you that they like to cuss. She giggles when she proclaims, “We have bad taste!” It’s that sense of taste that leads them to produce unique, often extraordinary new works in a warehouse space at Nightingale Theater.
The husband and wife have been a creative force in Tulsa for years, and the next show from Midwestern Theater Troupe proves that they don’t intend to stop. Sara Cruncleton will adapt and direct Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic film “Reservoir Dogs,” and blood will be shed—with a twist.
The director admits to having little patience for Tarantino’s normally sprawling scripts, but this one appealed to her on a different level.
“I started thinking about how touching the relationship between White and Orange is,” she said. “It’s interesting with two males, but I instantly started, as a mother, thinking about the maternal thing and if it would change the story very much if it were a woman and more geared towards that aspect. Just reading it again, that fit perfectly with some key roles (to change them to women) and so far in rehearsals, it’s amazing how right it feels to have them in those roles.”
And that’s exactly what she did in giving some carefully placed gender blinding to the script. Oddly enough, the changes came not in the gender switches, but in the playing space itself.
“It doesn’t seem weird or off at all,” she says. “The things I’ve had to tweak the most were not the lines for any of the women, but simply because of staging.”
The project began more than a year ago, with Sara handpicking the cast members as she adapted the work. The urge to experiment is business as usual for the troupe.
“Around here, we think, ‘Let’s just try it and see what happens,’” she said. “I’ve enjoyed it so much. I had fun during the writing process of the adaptation, and I knew that it would be entertaining. There’s a stellar cast, and they all came prepared because they’re excited about it, too.”
While many theatergoers are accustomed to seeing John Cruncleton behind the scenes as a writer and director (because “she’s a better performer,” he says), he’s being directed by Sara this time around and is enthusiastic about her decision to adapt four of the players into female roles for the stage.
“There is a deep emotional content to it,” he said. “But it tends to be masculine-oriented. This is an interesting way to delve into Tarantino’s universe and explore the feminine without distorting it. It’s a tight script.”
In the stage version, Sara Cruncleton brings every bit of ruthlessness you’d expect from the source material but also explores more maternal sides to the characters. How do women react versus men in these situations? It can go both ways.
“Women can be very nurturing, and yet, also have a tendency to take things personally and be overly emotional,” she said. “That’s when grudges are held. In studying the increasing prevalence of mob bosses that are women as part of my research, people tend to say they’re feeling more taken care of, but that the women also put out the most gruesome killings, because women don’t let things go. They’re willing to go the distance with it.”
The warehouse itself is the perfect setting for a show at the Nightingale. The crew uses the space to embrace the script while using the immediacy of the stage in ways that adjust the visual tone. In order to cover some of the more cinematic aspects, Cruncleton is using video projection to create a montage feel and cover some of the backstories and timeline. She’s also wielding lots of tricks to create a spectacle when it comes to making a bloody mess.
“This is our Halloween extravaganza, and we feel like it fits because of all the blood and gore and flinging ears,” she said. “Oozing blood, bullet holes, face gunshots—it’s gonna be lots of fun for me and John to clean up every night.”
Any of the offerings at the Nightingale, especially works from Midwestern, have had a reputation for being daring and pushing audiences. Sara Cruncleton says that’s just the way things have turned out.
“We follow our taste, never selecting something based on if it’s edgy enough or anything,” she said.
She insists that they’ve done things racier and far more avant-garde, but also adds, “I think the audience is going to feel good that this is a Nightingale show. It’s not something that they would see anywhere else in Tulsa.”
Just don’t come expecting an instant replay from the screen.
“This is definitely our own,” she said. “You’re not going to see people just parroting the characters, because we don’t want to make you think you’re watching a movie.”
The live element is one that Sara depends on for this staging.
“That’s what I love about going to the theater,” she said. “I like to see the magic that happens, and I think we’re going to create that here. It’s very theatrical, very Nightingale.”
Reservoir Dogs
Oct. 10-11, 17-18, 24-25
Nightingale Theater, 1416 E. 4th Street, 918.633.8666
$10
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