Hey, Judevine: Writer Drops By

“It’s the story of the invisible people…real human beings, with real lives. They have real loves and hates, joys and sorrows—and here they are.” This is the tale told in Judevine—at least, according to its author, David Budbill.

When Director Joy B. Fairfield ’03 applied for the rights to the play, Budbill learned of the production through his agent and began a correspondence with Fairfield and producer Lesley W. Ma ’02. It culminated in a weekend visit to Cambridge with the cast during rehearsal period, during which Budbill offered his own interpretation of his unique play.

Set in the fictional Vermont village from which it draws its name, Judevine is the narrative interweaving of a collection of poems whose flow, at times, recalls the language of Shakespeare.

It follows the extreme highs and shattering lows that make up the lives of its characters—woodchopper Antoine, welfare mother Grace, war veteran Tommy, to name a few—offered through the recollections of its narrator, David.

Though the villagers all live in relative poverty, their lives are unquestionably vibrant, owing much to the community they form with each other. This is one of the overriding themes of the play: what does it take to become a member.

How this and other themes strike the audience are particularly crucial, for Judevine is a play without plot. The events that define the characters’ lives occur outside of traditional dramatic structure.

Fairfield found such unconventional language and structure particularly attractive. “It challenges [the traditional] reality-based dialogue and action-based structure…it’s a more cutting edge work: It has a deeper engagement with language.”

This is appropriate, as Judevine is a show about theme, not story—people, not heroes. Not surprisingly, then, there are no clear conclusions or happily-ever-afters. It’s up to the viewer to construct his own emotional ending. “If it has a feel-good ending, you have to earn it,” said Budbill.

In its focus on what Budbill calls “the most invisible people in America: poor whites,” Judevine confronts a world that is all too present but rarely seen or dramatized. “I like to think of Judevine as a sort of third world country inside the boundaries of the United States. The people you see in Judevine are not the sort you see in the gentrified view of the state of Vermont” says Budbill.

Yet Budbill does not want his audience to simply view the people of Judevine as a beaten-down underclass.

Using a character from the play as an example, Budbill explained, “ Grace is a welfare mother accused of beating her children. I would hope that after you see this play with this character, that you see this person as a person, you see ‘there’s Grace’, and she’s a human being. She has these loves and hates and desires and struggles, and she’s not a statistic. She’s a human being. She’s living a life, and it’s very important to her, even if it’s not important to anyone else.”

Fairfield agrees, citing such an outlook as why she chose the play. “It doesn’t let humans be simple,” she said.

Fundamental to Judevine is the conflict of the chronicler. The audience’s guide to the world is a narrator, who is welcomed into the village for his personal attributes and yet excluded for his professional ones: They fear that, as a writer, he may convert their lives into narrative form.

The inspiration for the narrator is Budbill himself, who hails from a blue-collar background, but has the resume of an intellectual. “I have this odd sort of love-hate relationship with the working class,” he conceded.

This figures prominently in the creation of David, who is separated from those he writes about not by money, but by culture. With such a conflicted identity, David embodies the fundamental angst of a writer: how to observe a community while still being a member of it.

Yet from such conflict has emerged a play that captures, sometimes serendipitously, exactly what the author intended it to. Budbill explained that he did not initially know that Jude, a name which figures prominently in the play and its title, was the patron saint of lost causes.

Judevine engages the lives of people who are written off, yet refuse to disappear. Said Budbill, summing up his play, “Their lives are tough. Their lives are very hard. And yet they persevere.”

theater

Judevine

Written by David Budbill

Directed by Joy B. Fairfield ’03

Produced by Lesley W. Ma ’03

Loeb Experimental Theater

April 25-27