MANKIND Kicks Off Iron Crow Theatre's Season of Defiance

By Frankie Kujawa
Imagine a world where women are extinct, everyone's gay, abortion is illegal — and you’re pregnant. Thus is the summary of Robert O’ Hara’s MANKIND now running through Sunday, October 23rd at Baltimore’s Iron Crow Theatre.  Kicking off ‘The Season of Defiance,’ Iron Crow’s latest play is an audacious, hilarious allegory that envisions an uncannily familiar future – one where abortion has been universally criminalized and women have gone extinct from centuries of mistreatment. Even the universal homosexuality that’s resulted and man’s new procreative capacity have not stopped mankind from “f**king everything up.” Performers Jake Stibbe (Jason) and Max Johnson (Mark) chat about the play and share what they hope audiences take away from the performance

Jake Stibbe portrays "Jason" in Iron Crow Theatre's "MANKIND"

Max Johnson portrays "Mark" in Iron Crow Theatre's "MANKIND"

“I think [audiences] can expect to be…entertained,” laughed Jake Stibbe who plays Jason in MANKIND.  “It’s definitely very interesting. Audiences can expect to, hopefully, walk away with maybe not feeling fully settled.  Definitely feeling unsettled, but in a way that is both positive and leaves them thinking.  It leaves audiences in a thought-provoking state. It’s quite an experience, overall."  

“It definitely pushes the bounds of satire and the way that we choose to tell stories," added Max Johnson who plays Mark in the performance. “I really love Robert O’Hara’s work in general, and it’s such a gift to be able to perform one of his plays." Johnson added that the way O’Hara talks about this play is hopefully how audiences will walk away from it after the performance is finished.  “[O’Hara] believes that satire and this kind of comedic/dramatic work should make the audience start thinking in the theater and continue to be thinking and wondering and pondering far after the play continues. So, I think our hope is that we’re going to introduce a lot of different themes and a lot of different ways to tell a story to an audience, and hope that they continue thinking about it as they leave. Whether they agree with it or disagree with it, or dislike it or like it, I’m hoping that they’re going to be thinking about it.”

Jake Stibbe (Jason) and Max Johnson (Mark) in Iron Crow Theatre's "MANKIND"

Johnson went on to describe the relationship between his character (Mark) and Stibbe’s character (Jason). “Mark and Jason are the two main character in the play.  The play’s action revolves around them. Jason, over the course of the play, gets pregnant and many complications with that ensue.”  Johnson continued, “Mark is the father of Jason’s baby. So, together they go as far as creating their own religion based around a backwards telling of feminism.  Mark, by himself, is not looking for a relationship and is carrying a lot of emotional baggage that doesn’t become revealed until much later in the play. Both he and Jason are very much an unlikely pair, and a pair trying to grapple with the idea of whether or not they want a relationship or even a baby.”

Stibbe added, “I definitely feel like it took me a while to fully get to know [the character of Jason]. I think that [Jason] is a multi-faceted character who has a lot of different wants and desires. But at the core of it, I think he is a nice combination of a goofball who at the end of the day is a caretaker, too. He wants to have a family and cares more about simplicity than starting his own religion. He is a human who has human desires and errs and he’s very complicated. He knows that he’s not perfect, and sometimes those imperfections can get in his way from what he really wants.”

"One of the greatest gifts of theater, in general, is it allows us to see a topic in a way which we haven’t seen it before." ~ Max Johnson (Mark) in Iron Crow Theatre's MANKIND.

As the conversation turned towards what potential lesson or theme audiences might take away form this performance, Stibbe shared, “I think that this piece hits on a lot of really poignant, relevant topics - especially in the political sphere. To me...this play is about money.  It’s about money being this ruling force over all things. The way that people live their lives and the decisions that they make.  When we are only focused on power and money,  things are going to go south.  Also, the true nature of somebody can really be negatively influenced by these very negative, powerful forces.”

“This is a difficult question to answer," Johnson added, "because this play tackles a lot of difficult topics.  I know while I’ve been working on it, I’ve struggled to find a single ‘pitch’ or a single unifying theme that I’m hoping an audience walks away with from our performance. What I’m hoping is that this play helps to continue to deepen and open our views on wide-variety of topics. From topics such as religion to our relationship with abortion; which is an incredibly difficult topic at this moment.  One of the greatest gifts of theater, in general, is it allows us to see a topic in a way which we haven’t seen it before. To think about something in a way that we haven’t thought about it before; whether we agree or disagree with it.  So, I’m hoping that this play gives people a chance to think about topics that have really dominated our lives, recently, in perhaps a different way - or the same way.  Maybe it’ll reaffirm their ideas about it – and that’s good, too.”

For more information on Iron Crow Theatre's production of "MANKIND" visit: www.ironcrowtheatre.org/mankind