Mind’s Eye: The reach of imagination

Imagination, many times, is more potent than reality. The reach of the mind is empowering — at times, overpowering. The realm of the mind is lasting — and oftentimes the embers of every imagining threaten to stay and merge with reality.

Mind’s Eye, a play based on the award-winning novel of Paul Fleischman, is about the reach of imagination between Elva (played by Joy Virata), an 88-year-old retired teacher of English literature and drama, and Courtney (played by Jenny Jamora), a 16-year-old paraplegic. Together, as both of them are confined in a room at a nursing home in North Dakota, they use their imagination to fly — oh, and how they soar!

The play concluded last Sunday at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium of the RCBC Plaza in Makati City. It was the second time it was shown in Manila after Mind’s Eye had its worldwide theatrical debut in the Philippines last year. At the helm of the play is director Jaime del Mundo.

At the onset, Mind’s Eye is a mere exposition of the lives of people at the nursing home. Elva’s agile mind despite her almost nonagenarian existence is juxtaposed with Courtney’s apparent diminishing appetite for life. Elva, in her twilight years, is still full of life, citing with brilliance and an almost-perfect memory her favorite passages from the books she read in the past. Courtney, on the other hand, is resigned from life as she is filled with angst and anger — who wouldn’t be when at 16 she was paralyzed after she fell from a horse.

As the play progresses, so does the relationship between the protagonists. Elva can’t take it sitting down that Courtney will not join her in the greatest journey of their lives — by imagining that they are on a trip to Italy with just the aid of their imagination and a guide, a 1910 Baedeker travel guidebook.

Mind’s Eye teaches that imagination is both for the young ones and the young once. It also sustains the belief that reading should be everyone’s business because a book is friendlier and smarter than the boobtube.

While Courtney lies in bed, her lower half-body motionless, she reads the book to Elva who, with a cane in hand as she goes around the room, gives her insights of the places they are visiting. Together, with the use of their pregnant imagination, they have travelled to Naples, Rome and Florence.

Joy Virata is instrumental in the huge success of the play. As she essays her role of Elva, Joy’s own mind’s eye exhibits clarity of vision. Well, that’s expected of a theater legend. Her prowess as a thespian is displayed in Mind’s Eye as she ardently describes their sojourn to some of the world’s greatest museums, art galleries and architectural monuments around Italy. Joy effects the viewers’ minds to have their own eyes, too, because — with just her evocative voice, the joy and excitement in her eyes, even the cadence of her feet and the thud of her cane as she walks around the stage — she’s able to bring her audience to Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The feeling that the members of the audience get is almost surreal because everything that Joy describes on stage becomes reality in the imagination of the viewers. So, in many instances, the viewers travel with Elva and Courtney in appreciating the vast and varied collection of important Renaissance art including the works of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Botticelli — by simply using their mind’s eye.

Meanwhile, it is with dexterity that Jenny Jamora attacks her role as Courtney. Well, in Mind’s Eye, Jenny proves that, no doubt, she is a stage dynamo. Her theatrical turbines are just heating up in the first two acts of the play but when she begins to travel with her mind’s eye, her skills as a thespian turboprop to a boundless domain. Jenny’s silence in the play is deafening — you feel an orphan’s pain in her character, your senses are assaulted and assuaged by her longing for love and attention and the desire to escape life’s sordid realities. But when Jenny’s character starts to open the eye of her mind, you find yourself running after her because the reach of her imagination runs like the speed of light — so fast that Jenny’s characterization will leave you breathless and panting and wanting for more. It is with a big heart that Jenny sincerely tackles her role. And, again, she proves herself worthy. 

Joy and Jenny are a joy to watch because their chemistry is both solid and effervescent. They know by heart their roles that they are able to nonchalantly lend an adlib to their stage business when a member of the audience at the front seats loses her deference for the show when she loudly answers her phone in the middle of a cerebrally stimulating scene.

Mind’s Eye is indeed another feather in Jaime del Mundo’s cap. He is successful once again in translating every word of the play into a monumental memory in every viewer’s heart and mind. If it were a moving picture, it would have been easy to helm Mind’s Eye. But the reach of Jaime’s mind is also limitless, so he treats Mind’s Eye with distinct sensitivity and the sincere desire to make it a riveting travelogue even without allowing his characters to leave the confines of the nursing home. He employs an engaging tempo that allows the play to roll with its own sense of purpose — to celebrate the victory of the creativity of the mind. Jaime, a veteran, achieves this purpose bar none.

Even the stage and light designs lend warmth to the play that is set against the dreariness of wintertime.

It also helps that the members of the supporting cast have hefty theatrical credentials: Naths Everett, Naty Crame Rogers, Red Concepcion and Caisa Borromeo. Everett is the funny May in Mind’s Eye who, because of her perfect timing, which is a gift, tightly binds the audiences in stitches with her natural and effortless antics. Though still young, she credibly plays the part of a geriatric patient in the play. Rogers, who will turn 91 soon, makes an outstanding and heartwarming special participation at the end of the play.

If the full-house attendance last week at the Carlos P. Romulo Theater is any indication, Mind’s Eye should have a repeat. And it should be done soon.

More and more people deserve to see Mind’s Eye if only for the purpose of exacting in them the importance of imagination. More than being cerebral, I believe Mind’s Eye is a story of love between people at odds who choose to become friends. In the end, friendship also splays magic in the mind because friendship is indeed magical.

(Mind’s Eye was presented by C. Virata Advisory and Gillian Joyce Virata and sponsored by Repertory Philippines Foundation, Inc., Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., Jinggo Montenejo and TeamAsia.)

(For your new beginnings, e-mail me at bumbaki@yahoo.com. I’m also on Twitter @bum_tenorio. Have a blessed Sunday.)