Boldly inventive 'Froggy' premieres at Center Rep

  • by Jim Gladstone
  • Monday February 3, 2025
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(L-R) Jamella Cross, Emily Newsome, and Maeve Coyne in 'Froggy'
(L-R) Jamella Cross, Emily Newsome, and Maeve Coyne in 'Froggy'

After more than 10 years of development, "Froggy" is leaping to life. The narratively ambitious, technically complex theater piece, which premieres in a Center Rep production at Walnut Creek's Lesher Center for the Arts on February 9, has polliwogged its way through over a decade of workshops and development, continually morphing toward a final form.

Steeped in pop cultural references, brand names, and video games, "Froggy" reflects the world (and the mind) of its title character, a young woman who's been ghosted by her boyfriend and is haunted by her past.

Bracingly inventive in its storytelling and stagecraft, "Froggy" turns introspection inside out, taking audiences on a rollicking guided tour of its protagonist's sometimes disturbing thoughts.

Playwright Jennifer Haley  

Frames of reference
"Froggy"'s origins lie in a challenge that playwright Jennifer Haley posed to herself.

Haley, who has written for Netflix's "Mindhunter" and whose creepy "The Nether" ran at the San Francisco Playhouse in 2016, wanted to write a script that took advantage of the fractured, perspective-shifting narrative style she enjoyed in graphic novels.

To push herself in that direction, she drafted the original version of "Froggy" using InDesign, software primarily used to create page layouts, rather than a word processing program.

The pages of the resulting script featured comic book-style panels with snatches of dialogue, stage directions, and visual descriptions interspersed among them.

The format helped convey a sense of overlapping activity taking place in alternate realms: Froggy, the main character, could be playing a video game at home, while her in-game avatar stalked the mean streets of a gritty urban milieu.

A scene in which present-day Froggy was driving could take place in parallel with a vividly remembered episode from her childhood, or an imagined scene from her daydreams.

While none of this would be impossible to achieve with relatively conventional theatrical means, Haley's script demanded something that would give its simultaneities the eerie, sometimes disorienting blur of contemporary life.

How could stagecraft create a sense that scenes were perpetually emerging, subdividing, and eliding across a single character's consciousness—and subconsciousness?

Director of Creative Technology Jared Mezzocchi  

Interior design
Jared Mezzocchi, the production's Director of Creative Technology, an Obie-winning multimedia designer and a playwright himself, said he hopes that the show doesn't feel like it's been written, but that it's happening in real time.

The story, he said, is coming from Froggy, who, largely unbeknownst to herself is processing past traumas over the span of the play. The audience is watching a mind, alive.

"Every single sound, video projection, and lighting cue stems from Froggy herself," Mezzocchi said in an interview with the Bay Area Reporter.

"You know those scenes where you have a kid in a psychiatrist's office doodling?" he asks, referring to an archetypal movie moment, "The psychiatrist is wondering, 'Well, why is he drawing it that way? Why are there vicious and rigid lines as opposed to soft and bubble figures?'

"Everything on stage is an extension of Froggy's psychology. If a scene is in saturated colors and then it feels like there's a jump cut to desaturated colors, something's going on with her. What? Is she going through some grief here? Why is there a mood swing? All of the external aesthetics are there to help the audience better see Froggy's interior."

It's immersive theater, but rather than being immersed in the setting, you're immersed in a character's psyche.

"Even though the play is introspective, people will feel like they're on an adventure with 'Froggy'," says Matt Morrow, the show's director, who is also the Artistic Director of Center Rep.

"Froggy grew up watching westerns and war movies with her father, and so she grew up with this notion of an American hero. I think the play is very much about her casting herself as the hero in her own story," Morrow said in an interview with the Bay Area Reporter.

"We're going into interior landscapes, but we're doing it in such a hyperkinetic way. I want people to feel thrilled by it. It should feel like a joyride that goes into some dark places."

'Froggy,' Feb. 9-Mar. 2. $25-$78. Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek. www.lesherartscenter.org

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