Most UCLA students may recall the anxiety of breaking the umbilical cord upon going away to college, but at least this transition didn’t last 150 years.
Starting Jan. 17 and running until Feb. 21 at the Ford Theatres in Hollywood, Circle X Theatre Company presents “Battle Hymn,” a play about a girl whose epic pregnancy through pivotal events in American history guides her into adulthood.
Martha’s sojourn spans from the Civil War all the way up to present day conflicts in Gaza. After living through the goriest battles of the former, she refuses to give birth on a bloody battlefield and prolongs her pregnancy for 150 years in order to give her baby life in a time of peace.
Suzy Hunt, who portrays Martha on stage, said that she had to retrace her steps to remember the vulnerable feeling of being young and alone.
“There’s that moment, especially for young women, when we have to leave our childhood and parents behind and stand on our own two feet. We have to make decisions on our own,” Hunt said. “On the same token, I love that she moves through American history because it’s on the same parallel as America moves from youth to adolescence to adulthood.”
Jim Leonard, the playwright of “Battle Hymn,” described the time periods that Martha lives through as times of transition in American history. He said that the play was partly inspired by the transition that is currently occurring in the political sphere.
“The country’s as big a mess as we’ve seen it in a long time. I feel thrilled that Obama’s president, but I feel sorry for the guy,” Leonard said. “Economically, the country’s fallen to pieces, and we’re involved in a couple of wars that I think we’ve got very little business being involved with.”
In spite of the global elements in the play, Hunt believes that “Battle Hymn” emphasizes humble themes of community and love.
“This is a war play more so than anything I’ve seen in the past few years because it’s not about Iraq or Afghanistan,” Hunt said. “It’s about a person in the country searching for a safe place in the world, and I think that drew me personally and artistically to the project.”
As Martha makes her journey into adulthood and toward a safe place, Leonard injects the story with whimsy and fantasy. John Langs, the play’s director, said that singing cows make a cameo to help relay Martha’s emotions to the audience.
“Martha has found herself living like a recluse on a plain, and her only friends are the cows. In a moment when she is confronting the problem in her life ““ the loss of love and fear of having this baby ““ the cows are there to sing with her,” he said.
The actors who play the cows further step outside of their comfort zones by portraying characters of races and genders different than their own. Aside from serving a technical purpose, this race-and-gender-bending device teaches Martha lessons of acceptance and equality that Leonard says are relevant to the recent outcome of Proposition 8.
All of these characters continually cycle back into Martha’s life in one form or another to have an impact on her mystical journey through history.
“As people, we fall in love with the same person over and over again, and we make the same friends over and over again. There are these cycles in life where people come back into our lives, and each time they do they teach us something different,” Hunt said. “Our life is a montage of everyone we’ve ever met and things we’ve learned from people we are close to.”
From Civil War and singing cows, under the threat of lobotomies and shock treatments, and through the Summer of Love, Martha struggles to keep believing in her utopia. Hunt says that as the world forces Martha to mature, she gives up on her youthful optimism.
“A decade passes, and we’ve gone from the age of love in the ’60s to the stock-market boom where things don’t make sense anymore to Martha. She keeps being given things that are taken away,” Hunt said. “After so many lashes of that, she does decide in the end of the play that there is no safe place on earth.”
In spite of Martha’s grim conclusion, hope manages to find her in an unexpected way. Langs believes that the ending is consistent with a recent political event.
“Jim began writing this play during the Bush administration when things seemed a lot darker and America’s position in the world was starting to flounder,” Langs said. “Since then, we’ve had this election and this whole rebirth of hope in the nation. I think the play walks you through that dark tunnel and out the other side.”
Still, Langs doesn’t believe that “Battle Hymn” will stir up any political outrage.
“I don’t see it as a political play. I’m trying to help Jim tell this story about a young girl and her adventures. But creeping around every corner is a wonderfully sly, social commentary.”