An unassuming kitchen table surrounded by 50’s housewives may not seem like the place where a revolution begins, but then one of the wives starts pulling out electric vibrators.
This is the world of “Betty Crocker, Kinsey and Rock n’ Roll,” a new play written by local playwright Sterling Sax that’s being produced at the Nittany Theatre at the Barn in Boalsburg and opens on Thursday.
Although the 1960s are often thought of as time of social upheaval and sexual revolution, Sax uses his play to explore the way the seeds of change were already sprouting in the 1950s in hilarious and revealing ways.
“The revolution, in my opinion, had already begun,” Sax says.
There’s a resolute father who complains about the communists teaching sexual education at the local high school. There’s the eldest daughter who declares she’s so sexually repressed she’ll never get married, and demands a rock band to play her sweet sixteen party. And there’s the mother, a conventional women who must face these societal changes if she wants to keep her family together.
Throw these characters together, along with a dash of satire and irreverent humor, and you have the recipe for revolution: the kind of slow burning change that’s more powerful than a Molotov cocktail.
Sax says the idea for the show came to him when he came across an old magazine from the 1950s in an antique shop. The cover story promised the women reading it that the books of Alfred Kinsey, the influential and (at the time) controversial sexologist, could save their marriage.
At the same time that female sexuality was being brought to the forefront of American thought for the first time, rock and roll – “an acceptable alternative to sex,” one character in the play declares – was dominating the airwaves.
“Put all this together, and we have a perfect storm,” Sax says. “We have a comedy.”
Interestingly, despite the themes of revolution and female empowerment that run through the play, there’s also a sense of convention. Sax says one of the points of the play isn’t the change itself, but how the family in the play handles the change and grows together.
“Change is coming from within the family,” says director Richard Roland. “But families will stay together through change, and that change is important.”
Roland, a theatre professional pursing his master’s in directing at Penn State, is directing “Betty Crocker, Kinsey and Rock n’ Roll” for the very first time with a mix of professional actors, Penn State theatre students and community members who just love the stage.
He says directing a play that’s never been seen before is an exciting experience. Unlike other shows Roland has done, he doesn’t have to worry about the audience’s preconceived notions about how the play should be put on.
“I knew that, within in the world of the 50s, there were certain ideas and archetypes I wanted to work with,” Roland says. “But that’s not confining. That’s defining, and from that there’s a lot of freedom to explore.”
“Betty Crocker, Kinsey and Rock n’ Roll” opens on Thursday, and will run until August 30 at the Nittany Theatre at the Barn. It features some suggestive content, and tickets can be purchased online.
