Tipping Point Theatre's “Lungs” explores relationships, climate change
Tipping Point Theatre’s “Lungs” explores relationships, climate change
Northville’s Tipping Pointe Theatre is closing its 2024/25 season with a production that explores the complexities of long-term relationships as well as the effects of climate change on future generations. Duncan MacMillan’s “Lungs” — a wordplay referencing the organ that requires clean air to communicate — is about a couple who grapples with whether to have children.
“It is about the life cycle of a relationship with kind of the life cycle of the Earth behind it,” said Julia Glander, Tipping Pointe Theatre’s artistic director, who also directs the show.
The two-person play stars Connor Allston and Kristin Shields as the unnamed couple. The two discuss the environmental and ethical dilemmas of raising a child in the modern world, performed in an uninterrupted dialogue that spans a 40-year period.
“(It’s) like a fly-on-the-wall look into the life of a couple from very early on in the relationship, to contemplating having a child… and all the feelings and emotions that come with it,” Allston said.
Shields said there’s an authenticity to the conversation we don’t experience in the highlight reels of people’s lives we often see on social media. She said the dialogue focuses more on the “messy middle.”
“This is kind of a peek behind the curtain of the reality of a relationship, a real deep true partnership, and kind of the ugly things that may come out,” she said. “(It’s about) the beautiful truths and the struggles and the small wins, and it’s relatable to real people.”
The play was written in 2011 and updated in 2019, and Shields said it feels more relevant now than ever.
“The natural disasters that we’re experiencing have escalated exponentially, and all these new policies that are being thrown at us, there’s a sense of chaos… currently in our climate on all sides of the political spectrum,” she said. “I think these characters are in the midst of real uncertainty.”
Glander’s production also adds cellist Laurie Jarski, who creates a combination composed/improvised percussive background.
“The play doesn’t need it,” Glander said. “This was just our way of heightening the experience in our particular space.”
To complement the show’s environmental theme, the production is using thrifted costumes and sets that already exist or are made from recycled wood and is offering only digital programs.
“We’re going the whole nine yards with sustainability, because we… want to put our money where our mouth is,” Allston said.
Shields said the play is relatable even to people who aren’t parents.
“Maybe they’ve thought about parenting, maybe they couldn’t become parents, maybe they’re worried about the climate, maybe they’re not, but they want to connect with someone that they can’t,” she said. “It’s universal, especially spanning such a lifetime, you’re going to find yourself in something within this story.”
‘Lungs’
Thursday – June 1
Tipping Pointe Theatre
361 East Cady St., Northville
Tickets: $25 and up