Apartment Living at the Skylight Theatre is a play that shows how the pandemic changed people’s lives and the challenges of the “stay at home” mandate.
Cassandra (Charrell Mack) and Alex (Gabriel Leyva) live together in an apartment and are about to get married, but soon realized that their goals might not be aligned. Dixon (Andrew Russel) works at a store and lives in an apartment with his mom Easter (Gigette Reyes), who is a nurse at a hospital. Mayisha (Geri-Nikole Love) is Cassandra’s friend and they’re in constant contact via video calls. As the pandemic intensifies, all of the characters’ endurance and relationships are stretched to the limits.
One of the main highlights of the story is the tremendous risks essential workers take to keep things running, oftentimes sacrificing their own safety, as in the case of Dixon’s mom Easter. The characters are forced to live together with others in small spaces for long periods of time, dealing with a disease in loneliness in a hospital where visits are not allowed, and probably one of the most scary sides of the pandemic, having enough time to question our own feelings, priorities, relationships, and face our own demons.
The play takes us on a roller coaster of emotions where dynamic relationships are tested through assumptions, race, love, the uncertainty of a pandemic with no end on sight, and riots in the background to heighten the racial tensions in today’s society. Cassandra questions and is questioned on her relationships with Alex and Mayisha. Dixon faces the new realities and questions his own priorities. A snapshot of the craziness of the pandemic can be reflected on the conversation Cassandra holds with the White Lady (Rachel Sorsa), where assumptions can take the right or the wrong direction, but at the end, it shows a more positive and unexpected result, bringing people together, bonding by the collective hope that better days lie ahead. As Easter assured Cassandra, “Everything will be OK”.
Details:
Apartment Living
Skylight Theatre
1816 1/2 N. Vermont Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Mar 12 – April 24
Playwright: Boni B. Alvarez
Director: Jon Lawrence Rivera
Tickets: https://ci.ovationtix.com/34914/production/1106744
