Eileen Kuo – Memphis Flyer

Chief among social media’s benefits must be the ability to sleuth your way into a crush’s world — to discover their likes on Facebook, their tagged friends on Instagram, their jobs past and present on LinkedIn — and create an idea of a person that perfectly suits one’s imagination.

For 27-year-old Annabel in Through the Looking Screen by Anne Chmelewsky, social media is the perfect outlet for her crushing on her colleague Sebastian. “Annabelle herself is kind of shy in person,” says director Eileen Kuo. “He’s in a big crowd. So she finds herself blossoming more online, and so the show is about her discovering social networking and social media and learning about people online and having lots of friends online. So it’s through this medium that she’s really trying to get to know her crush and piece together who he is.”

The show, a production of Quark Theatre, is a one-woman operetta, with Jacquelene Cooper starring. “This role calls for somebody with an opera background, but also a musical theater background to translate a story like this,” Kuo says. “[Cooper] can do it all. Seeing what she can do on stage, she was really the perfect fit.

“It’ll be just me and her on the stage; I’ll accompany her on the piano,” the director continues. “And so it’s sort of a musical journey of her experiencing the internet, singing through her feelings and thoughts, just everything that she’s going through trying to connect online.”

While the music is classical, it is innately modern in its themes, creating an interesting juxtaposition not unlike how social media, while connective, can also be equally isolating. This show was conceived of in 2011, says Kuo, yet its relevance remains even through all of social media’s changes. “I think at that time people were just first starting to experience, ‘oh gosh, all these notifications, all these people want to connect with me,’ but that’s something we still experience today. We’re still trying to get likes. We’re still trying to get excellent social media engagement. … It’s such a current and updated story that I think a lot of people will find really relatable.

“I hope audiences walk away with just a warm, fuzzy feeling having gotten to know Annabelle as a character,” Kuo adds. “But also, I hope they walk away with some conversations about our relationships with social media.”

Quark’s production of Through the Looking Screen marks the North American premiere and Quark Theatre’s first musical. Chmelewsky, the composer, charged no licensing fee, and she and Quark instead donated what would have been the fee to Stax Music Academy.

Purchase tickets at quarktheatre.com. Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., with 2 p.m. Sunday matinees.

Through the Looking Screen, TheatreSouth at First Congo, 1000 Cooper Street, Friday, September 20–October 6, $20.

Six chairs, two actors, a compelling script, and an audience — that’s all Tony Isbell needs to put on Quark Theatre’s latest production, Lungs. “Our focus as a company is really on the relationship between the actors and the audience,” the director says, “and we have a much smaller emphasis on things like sets and costumes and lights and sound. It’s about that experience of the actors performing and their relationship with the audience, and Lungs is certainly a show that highlights that.”

Written by Duncan Macmillan in 2011, Lungs, which Isbell describes as a “comedy/drama,” recounts a yearslong discussion between a couple, as played by Eileen Kuo and Chris Tracy, trying to decide whether to have a baby. “Parents from time immemorial have worried about if now is the right time to have a baby, but with everything the world is facing — climate change and political unrest and everything else — this generation now has some pretty specific things that they have to worry about,” Isbell says. “And [the play is] them talking and debating and laughing and crying and fighting and loving and just going through the entire gamut of emotions, all in about 90 minutes with no intermission. … It’s sometimes hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking — just like real life.”

The playwright Macmillan describes the piece as “a conversation that spans a lifetime,” Isbell adds, with the couple’s discussion jumping from one moment to the next. “They’ll be discussing one subject and then the next line is suddenly two weeks later but the conversation continues,” the director says. “When you think about a couple that’s been together for a long time, you kind of do have the same conversation that goes on and on. … And the actors are doing a great job with it.”

Indeed, with their different acting styles and approaches, Kuo and Tracy have remarkable chemistry that’s even evident in Quark’s promo videos posted to Facebook. “If you cast people who are talented and good and right, they invariably bring something with them that you would never have thought of,” Isbell says. “That has certainly been the case in this show. They would be rehearsing a scene and just make me just burst into laughter because what they did was so much funnier than what I had in mind.”

Further, with a cast of just two, Isbell says, “You have the opportunity to dig much deeper into what’s going on and into the relationship.” Certainly, that depth benefits the audience as the characters and their points of view become more fleshed out. “Some people are going to feel more closely aligned to the woman’s point of view, some to the man’s,” Isbell says. “Some will probably think they’re both wrong; some will think they’re both right.”

In turn, the director adds, “Audiences can expect to have something to have a good conversation about it in the car on the way home or dinner the next day or wherever.”

Performances of Lungs are through May 14th, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. with Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. Tickets cost $20 and can be purchased at the door or at quarktheatre.com.

Lungs, TheatreSouth at First Congregational Church, performances through May 14, $20.