On April 13, the cast and creative team of Jumpers for Goalposts gathered for the first time to share their vision with Studio Theatre staff, board members, and supporters. Artistic Director David Muse began the evening with a brief introduction of playwright Tom Wells, a British playwright receiving his first US production at Studio.
Muse then introduced director Matt Torney, who returns to Studio after directing Irish playwright Enda Walsh’s The Walworth Farce and The New Electric Ballroom in repertory during Muse’s first season at Studio. A native of Ireland himself, Torney’s unique perspective on the spirit and rhythm of blue-collar life in the neighboring United Kingdom appealed to Muse, who saw Torney as an ideal fit to create the landscape of Hull, the industrial town in Northern England where the play is set.
Torney opened his remarks by conjuring the world of Hull, as well as the lives of our ragtag misfit football team, through Wells’s own opening stage directions:
“A changing room in Hull. A bit scruffy. Benches and graffiti. A bin. Some narrow windows high up on the back wall.
Showers are through a doorway, offstage.
Joe, Danny and Luke are sitting down, looking a bit knackered. Viv is fuming.
Throughout the scene, everyone apart from Luke gets changed out of kit, into clothes. Luke just puts more clothes on.
Geoff moonwalks on.
Viv glares.”
And so begins the action of the play following Barely Athletic’s opening round loss to the Lesbian Rovers who, by Beardy Geoff’s own assessment, “are really good…will probably win the league.”
Torney elaborated on Wells’s interest in writing a play framed by sports culture that included gay characters who are usually absent from such a narrative: “Tom’s great skill is in understanding people and their lives, things that they’re dealing with that make it hard to like themselves; which is something that I think everyone will relate to whether they’re gay or British or like sport. In talking to Tom, he said something short and profound. He said, ‘I want to write plays that are funny and sad.’ And I think that’s the whole story of his work.”
Scenic Designer Deb Booth set out to create the community locker room by first researching the architecture of such spaces, throughout the United Kingdom in particular. It was important to Torney and Booth that the details of the space alluded to a recreational space shared throughout the week with people from all walks of life, as the play just allows us to view the comings and goings of the gay and lesbian rec league who play on Sunday afternoons.
In welcoming five new actors to Studio’s stages, including notable DC favorites Kim Gilbert and Michael Glenn, the rehearsal process was officially underway and Torney set off with his cast to explore the lives of Barely Athletic’s members over the course of their first season.
—Nathan Norcross