Imagine buying and restoring your forever home, in a gentrifying area, but having to wade through the homeless each time you left.
Geffen Playhouse’s latest production, Ramiz Monsef‘s The Ants, directed by Pirronne Yousefzadeh, and starring Hugo Armstrong, Nicky Boulos, Megan Hill, Jeremy Radin, and Ryan Shrime takes you on a journey of questioning “why we spend so much money protecting ourselves instead of investing in our shared humanity”?
The Ants is set inside the home of Sean (Shrime) and Meredith (Hill). Their wealth is on display with the art adorning the sleek home. “The Brain” (Armstrong) sits atop the coffee table and controls all functions of the home.
This play is about the wealthy’s perception of the homeless, particularly the growing homeless encampment at the foot of the hill where our main characters are forced to pass each time they leave the house.
The audience can feel the tension rise as Meredith comes home to find Sean’s brother Nami (Boulos) there who’s in need of money and a place to sleep. She doesn’t like the homeless or Nami and its apparent. She’s not surprised to find Nami out of work and homeless. He’s no different than The Ants at the base of the hill.
This play takes the trio on an emotional journey as they are forced to confront their fears of a coordinated uprising by The Ants. The lack of law enforcement. The lack of food. And ultimately they are confronted with their fears of death.
The pizza guy (Radin) makes his way into the home because Nami ordered pizza and despite Meredith’s objections, “my house my rules“.
As the pizza guy articulates what the uprising entails, and why they selected THEIR home to be taken over, the audience is left wondering if Sean and/or Nami are The Ants leaders? Did they help coordinate the uprising?
Related: CHP Officers Remove People Occupying State-Owned Homes in El Sereno
The one character the audience doesn’t see but hears, is The Brain, a take on artificial intelligence that was designed by Meredith to run the home’s many functions. The Brain also comes across as being “alive” as he implores Meredith to let The Ants inside.
The title of the play appears to be a metaphor for how strong ants are when they work together. Over the course of the play the audience is shown visually what’s taking place outside and how the number of homeless are growing as they surround the home.
Ants are known for working in colonies and becoming powerful when they come together. The play shows that through coordination, The Ants (homeless) have banned together and now outnumber the police.
The play is a snapshot of a real-life issue engulfing not only the city of Los Angeles but also the nation and how resources and services tend to be steered to wealthier areas first, while The Ants in less affluent areas continue to languish and be left behind.
Audiences will love the set design and lighting courtesy of Carolyn Mraz and Pablo Santiago, which immerses you in the play which has a running time of 2 hours and 20 minutes. Dominique Fawn Hill brings the characters to life with costume designs that emulate a visual class system.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed The Ants and Monsef’s ability to provoke thoughts about how we see the homeless and whether we are doing enough to help the unhoused become housed.
This ensemble cast does an excellent job of bringing Monsef’s work to life and putting the audience in the mindset of how they would feel if an uprising took place outside their home and how they would cope with their impending death.
2UrbanGirls had the opportunity to speak with Boulos after the play and asked if it was hard getting into his character of Nami?
“This was an extremely tough one, for me, because its a gauntlet from the beginning to the end, and to manage the transition from light-heartedness and reality in the beginning, to the end where it’s just desperation knowing you’re starving to death,” said Boulos.
This play was created during the Geffen Playhouse’s The Writers’ Room program, in which Los Angeles playwrights develop new works with the support and guidance of the Geffen Playhouse artistic team with major support provided by the Edgerton Foundation New Play Production Fund.
The Ants is playing at Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater at Geffen Playhouse located at 10886 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024 through July 30. Tickets can be purchased online or at the Geffen Playhouse box office.
