Arts Alive! podcast: ‘Hir’ from Dead Canary

“It’s a rollercoaster … but the rollercoaster’s on fire.”

That’s how director Stephen Riordan describes the ride that is Hir, which opened Thursday at The Studio@620 and continues through May 24. It’s the Season 2 opener from his Dead Canary Productions.

Riordan and cast member Tiffany Faykus are guests on this edition of Arts Alive!

Playwright Taylor Mac’s preferred term for this show’s genre (because everything must be labeled, right?) is “absurdist realism.” On one hand, it’s a very dark comedy about a severely dysfunctional family.

On the other, it might be the bleakest interpretation of family dynamics ever put on a stage.

Labels, and definitions, are key players in this topsy-turvy game of chess. Isaac returns home after three years as a Marine, where his job was to collect body parts from Middle East battle sites.

Isaac is horrified to discover that his father, Arnie, has suffered a stroke, and is being treated only slightly better than a piece of furniture by his mother, Paige.

His younger sister Max is in the process of changing genders, which makes for awkward moments as Isaac learns about the neo-pronoun “hir,” the non-binary coupling of “him” and “her,” and other things about sexuality, genitalia and hormone treatments.

The reigning Queen of Chaos, though, is Paige, who has aligned with Max and thrown out all the household rules. Up is down and down is sideways. She’s mad as hell and she’s not going to take it any more!

Paige is taking out her pent-up rage on her drooling, stroke-addled husband, who it turns out was never much of a husband in the first place.

Click on the arrow to hear Riordan and Faykus discuss bring Hir to the stage.