TST’s No White Picket Fence tells stories of girls who grew up in the foster case system, verbatim

by Emma Wilkes

Alisha (Becca Brooke) speaks about her love for fine arts in Theatre St. Thomas’s world premiere of Robin C. Whittaker and Sue McKenzie-Mohr’s No White Picket Fence. Photo Credit: Andre Reinders

Theatre St. Thomas’s world premiere of No White Picket Fence explores the experiences of women who have lived their lives in foster care and have come out on the other side with a story to tell.

The play is a verbatim piece written by Robin C. Whittaker and Sue McKenzie-Mohr, taking the transcripts of interviews conducted with real youth in care and piecing them together to make a powerful statement—and an emotional 95 minutes.

Ten women portray the roles of Lotus, Kari, Kris, Emma, Emily, Amanda, Alisha, Lisa, Brooklyn, and Mary respectively. While there stories are all different, they have something in common: their strength and resilience through foster care. The play deals with everything from illness to drug abuse, rape, and neglect. Some found that despite being taken from their birth parents, they may not have been happy or safe in their new living situation. Lisa (Elizabeth Matheson) delivers a truth that is both poignant and hard-hitting: after being taken from her childhood home due to her father’s abuse, she asks “why don’t they take him away?”

Each monologue and moment is delivered truthfully; because the play is verbatim, every “um”, “uh”, and instance of bad grammar is included in the text. (Perhaps most memorable is Amanda’s use of “tooken” instead of “taken”). Each woman takes turns filming, acting as the interviewer, or interacting with props.

At the beginning of each show, the actors mingle with the audience, talking until it is time for places (a choice that often makes both actors and audience uncomfortable, but seemed to work for the piece).

The set is striking. Each actor sits on a miniature house with lights in each window. The actors are lit with a single spot during their monologues. The floor is painted like a roadmap and the characters follow the roads moving from house to house, literally and figuratively, as their stories progress. A sheet hung over a laundry line displays the title of each scene, and a television screen shows footage, creating a sort of documentary style throughout the piece. Sound design, while present, was not integral to the production (in fact, I don’t remember any of it).

While many creative risks paid off (such as having cast members “film” the character being interviewed), some did not. In particular, the set made use of a number of shelving units stacked with books to represent a social worker’s office; while from certain angles it would have been aesthetically pleasing, in some moments it blocked much of the audience from viewing the actor who was speaking.

While there is not always a “happily ever after” for everyone, each woman believes herself to be living well, in her own terms.

Produced by Theatre St. Thomas, Whittaker and McKenzie-Mohr’s No White Picket Fence ran at STU’s Black Box Theatre from February 1-4, 2017.