Lýkos Ánthrōpos.Led by a guide in a fright mask, our group trooped down a lantern-lit path, past stone grave markers of all sizes, some dating back to the early 1800s, to a wooded clearing. There, ringed by towering old trees and tombstones, in the presence of the dead, we sat, on folding chairs and blankets, in a circle surrounding actor Nicholas Gerwitz.Spotlit in the center, he portrays an anxious young man, who ventures into the night woods and encounters an alluring stranger, portrayed by Patrick Kilpatrick.
Their hookup might be carnal, or it could be fatal, as predator meets prey.“I definitely wanted to explore the danger of cruising,” playwright Bartlett tells me over a video call. “Because, look, there is something implicitly dangerous about it on so many levels, and also exciting at the same time.”In Lýkos Ánthrōpos, Bartlett explores that danger in the form of a werewolf who stalks the woods where the young man, and many other men, cruise for sex.
Speaking Bartlett’s verse, the young man and the stranger convene under the trees, led by a desire for flesh, though not necessarily the same desire.Inside one of them lurks a monster. The play toys with the notion of whether that monster is metaphorical, supernatural, or both.
And the ambiguity is baked in, says Bartlett, who was aiming “to remain really mysterious and really opaque and not answer too many of the audience’s questions.”For instance, while the play offers its share of Wolfman lore, it doesn’t do a lot of explaining about how gay cruising spots function, or what goes down. That’ll just be left to the imagination of anyone who isn’t familiar.“I wrote this play for gay men, just to be clear,” Bartlett affirms.
“But I want it to be accessible to all audiences. I think the allure is a story about werewolves, a story about monsters, performed in a site-specific location.”An avid proponent of outdoor theater and site-specific work, Bartlett, who is based in rural Davidsonville, Maryland, and teaches at
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