There are many layers to “Human Error,” but in the end the story is about human potential, weaving harmony from dissonance and understanding as a path to peace. Eric Pfeffinger’s play has taken center stage at the Purple Rose for over a month and has been a huge hit with audiences who have come to expect such high quality at the Chelsea theater.
Travis Lynch, who has won numerous awards over the years for both his acting and directing, directed this hilarious and important play.
“I do a lot of reading and some imagining when I prepare to direct a play,” says Lynch. “I look for things inside a play that get me excited and will get the audience excited and try to bring out those special moments.”
Directing a play, especially one making its Michigan debut, is often a juggling act. The director needs to stay true to the writer’s vision while at the same time bringing out those “special moments” and also giving the actors freedom to express themselves and explore their characters.
“The way I was trained and what I truly believe is that we need to honor the playwright’s intent,” Lynch says. “When the playwright is available you can bounce things off of them but when they are not, you have to try and connect with them on some level. It comes down to telling a story and when you put it in that context it gives the director and actors some freedom to interpret the work.”
Lynch says they spend a lot of time at the Purple Rose “exploring.”
“We just get up and play with it,” he says. “We experiment and try different things and not everything works but that’s OK. It’s fun to figure it out and once we start doing that it starts to take some kind of structure.”
This process helps to get the creative juices flowing and gets everyone involved in the process. “Yeah, there is no right and wrong in the way we do it,” Lynch says. “It’s about finding the right direction we want to go.”
Like every play, “Human Error” brought its own unique challenges.
Madelyn and Keenan are NPR-listening, latte-sipping blue-staters who are planning a family. Or they were, anyway, until the fertility clinic screwed up and accidentally implanted their fertilized embryo in another uterus — a uterus belonging to a small-government churchgoing NRA cardholder. Can these ideologically hostile couples make it together through nine months of gestation without killing each other?
“Yes, it had its challenges but it also was very cool that we were doing a play like this,” says Lynch. “We have so few forums where we can get together and talk about how we differ and that excludes us from the opportunities to discover how much we are alike. This play is a good place to do that. Maybe people can learn something from watching the way our characters in our play go through what they end up going through because of human error.”
A successful play does exactly that. It makes you think, examine, reflect and maybe even change a little. A successful play also is entertaining and creates emotion. And the most difficult thing a play can do is make you laugh.
“The play was written with humor, a sense of irony and a good mixture of a lot of emotion and feeling,” Lynch says. “We define this as a comedy and that’s exactly what it is.”
Lynch says a lot goes into staging a play.
“You have to figure out the exits and entrances, who is changing clothes and who is not,” he says. “There are a lot of things that go into this.”
Meghan VanArsdalen (above left), a Michigan-born actor who received a BA in theater from Siena Heights University, plays Madelyn in Human Error.
“We worked together during Pickleball (Lynch was an actor and VanArsdalen was an understudy) and we were still looking to fill this role and she came in and auditioned and impressed all of us,” Lynch said. “She’s very talented. She’s very bright and she works extremely hard. It was a joy to watch her create that character.”
VanArsdalen describes Madelyn as a person who, as a result of being put in this stressful and intense situation, discovers a little bit about herself.
“I really dig her,” she says. “I think she is super fierce and is strong in her convictions but gets tested a lot during the course of the play.”
VanArsdalen, like Lynch, loves to play and discover and experiment.
“The great luxury we get here at the Purple Rose is time,” she says. “We get to not only explore but build trust with our characters and with ourselves as an ensemble and that’s very important. It’s a fun process to learn how a play flows from the start to the end.”
VanArsdalen has appeared onstage in New York at the Actors Studio, the Hudson Guild Theatre, and the Tank. She also has worked with many theaters across Southeast Michigan, including Tipping Point Theatre, Wild Swan Theater, Open Book Theatre Company, and Theatre Nova.
She currently is a resident artist at The Purple Rose.
“Just being connected with the talented people here is a joy and honor,” says VanArsdalen, who grew up in Jackson. “This is such a fertile ground of creativity. And there are so many opportunities to grow and learn and be challenged as an artist. Just being here is a gift.”
Human Errors runs through March 18 at The Purple Rose.
UP NEXT
Melanie is haunted by a voice that won’t leave her head. Call it a ghost, a hallucination, or clear evidence of a mental collapse. Either way, it’s a lingering reminder of a friend who was killed years ago; the friend was black, Melanie is white, and questions about why it happened – and who was to blame – come newly into focus when Melanie is drawn into a relationship that offers her a brighter future, but no clear escape from the past.
*Contains adult language & content.
Assistant Director: K. Edmonds
Featuring: Caitlin Cavannaugh*, Rachel Keown*, Rusty Mewha*, Olivia Miller*, Dez Walker
Tickets on Sale to Groups of 12+ on July 1, 2022
Donor Sales begin Feb. 21, 2023
General Sales begin March 7, 2023
