Theatre LILA’s forthcoming show, “A Love Letter,” features a live accordion player, inventive choreography and an electronic remix of “La vie en rose” — and that’s just in the first two minutes of the show.
On a snowy Saturday in the basement of Art House 360, an 11-person ensemble rehearsed dialogue, lifts and dance numbers for “A Love Letter,” an original show from Theatre LILA that will run Feb. 5-15.
Known for staging original plays, Theatre LILA’s return to the stage post-pandemic is a collaboration with Barrio Dance, also a resident at Art House 360.
At Art House 360, dancers rehearse for “A Love Letter,” produced by Theatre LILA and Barrio Dance.
“I feel like we’ve done what we set out to do, which is experiment with the form of storytelling,” said Jessica Lanius, the creative director of Theatre LILA, who co-founded the company 22 years ago. LILA’s work explores “visceral physical theater.”
“We use the artists in the room in every way we can,” Lanius said. “We’ve got musicians, vocalists, dancers and actors, and we’re literally designing the pieces around the talent and the room.”
Since the show weaves together poetry, live music, narrative and movement, Lanius enlisted help from AJ Juarez, founder and director of Barrio Dance, an urban dance studio with locations in Madison and Verona.
Dancers perform during a dress rehearsal for “A Love Letter.”
Juarez has worked with Theatre LILA since 2014, when Lanius brought the company from New York City to Madison. But “A Love Letter” marks the first time the two companies have collaborated on every step of a show, from creation to completion.
“The caliber of talent that AJ has with his Barrio dancers is pretty outstanding,” Lanius said. “I think he’s raising the bar in the dance world, particularly in his genre, and to have that alongside what we’re doing with the actors is pretty special.”
Jessica Lanius speaks with performers during a dress rehearsal for “A Love Letter.”
The collaboration seemed like a natural fit — with the opening of the nonprofit arts center in Verona, Theatre LILA and Barrio Dance have rehearsal studios down the hall from one another, and a performance venue that’s just up the stairs.
‘A celebration of relationships’ onstage
Lanius came up with the idea of a show about love after trying — and failing — to create a play that responded to the fractured political climate of the United States. Theatre LILA has long addressed social justice issues in its shows, but every time Lanius tried to sit down and write something that referenced current events, she questioned whether that’s what people needed right now. She decided to pivot.
“Maybe what we need and want is just something beautiful, funny and light, right? To remind us all what connects us and to have fun with it ourselves,” she said.
Lanius wrote scenes and dialogue for “A Love Letter,” while Gina Cornejo, LILA’s Writer’s LAB Director, wrote poetry to be incorporated in the show. Juarez tackled choreography, creating unique movement that evokes the complex emotions that come alongside love.
At Art House 360, dancers rehearse for “A Love Letter,” produced by Theatre LILA and Barrio Dance.
Featuring songs like Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know,” the hour and a half long production is reminiscent of “Moulin Rouge,” mixing contemporary music and styles with more traditional theater in a series of vignettes.
While the vignettes don’t directly connect to each other to form a single plot, they do have similar themes and common threads. One of those common threads is a sense of magical realism, which appears throughout the show in the form of a character named Eros, who’s modeled after the Greek god of love.
Eros takes part in several scenes, representing the feeling of magic or unpredictability that comes with falling in love.
“It’s really loose and kind of playful and fun. It really just takes you on a ride,” Lanius said.
While the original plan was to focus on romantic love, the idea developed to embrace all other facets of love, particularly through a series of love letters written by Cornejo.
Theatre LILA and Barrio Dance’s “A Love Letter” opens Feb. 5 at ART House 360.
“The theme was romantic love, and then it also became self-love, so that’s in there too. There’s some letters to a daughter, there’s letters to a father, letters to abuelo (grandfather). It’s a celebration of relationships, mostly romantic, but others as well,” Lanius said.
The final product feels like a celebration of everything that made the show possible.
“It’s a love letter to our community. It’s a love letter to the Art House as the first place where there’s going to be this explosion of all these different art forms telling these stories,” she said.
“Grab someone you love, whether it’s a friend or a date or a family member,” Lanius added, “and be ready to get up close and personal in a way that maybe you haven’t been before.”
