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Arts & Entertainment

Behind Betsy Franco's 'Metamorphosis: Junior Year'

'So much has come out of the production that I didn't realize was in the book,' author says of her debut play, premiered by the Palo Alto Children's Theatre.

Imagine a world where the gods can be as crazy as they want while putting the hapless humans in their dominion under incredible pressure to bend to their selfish whims. Ovid, the Roman author, imagined just such a world 2,000 years ago in Metamorphoses, his retelling of classical myths.

Now imagine the gods’ chaos transposed to a modern suburban high school. In the theatrical version of Metamorphosis: Junior Year, by Palo Alto children’s author Betsy Franco, premiering through Saturday at the Palo Alto Children’s Theatre, Ovid’s incest victim, Myrrh, becomes a teen girl nearly destroyed by her father’s molestation. Ovid himself, played by Finn Mayer, becomes a put-upon teen, Everyman, harried by his helicopter parents and largely taken for granted by his peers, who turns to art to make sense of the abuse, addiction, social isolation, failure phobia and general mayhem all around him.

“Someone told me, ‘You are so Ovid,’” Mayer quipped Saturday in a discussion after the show. “Self-abusive, gangly awkward artist who has trouble with girls ... other than hitting myself with a belt”—Ovid’s secret practice, perhaps, to feel "real" in a world of anomie— “he’s exactly me.

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“Comparing my insides with other people’s outsides – we make them gods in our own eyes,” Mayer said. “If anyone here doesn’t do that, congratulations.”

The theatrical adaptation of Franco’s 2009 novel, thanks greatly to the able cast of local teen actors, adds depth to Franco’s novelistic vision of an outsider kid commenting on his crazy world. In the play, there are many points of view, both funny and sad. We clearly see who’ll be successful at and after Lambert High—almost always, it’s the kids who manage to be crazy in a socially acceptable way. 

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“So much has come out of the production that I didn’t realize was in the book,” Franco said Saturday. “When you collaborate, something new happens. “

Franco’s son, Tom, contributed the drawings by Ovid that highlight both the book and the play. The complex staging by associate director, Michael Miranda, includes Tom Franco’s drawings animated and projected on several screens, so that as Ovid speaks we see his artwork take form.

“As the pages wipe across, we’re seeing Ovid’s journal,” Miranda said. “A static drawing doesn’t express what an artist does.”

The two-act play contains 108 video cues and 180 lighting cues. “I’ve directed operas with one-third the cues,” director Rafal Klopotowski said. Particularly effective are the clips of Amelia Saliba-Long as Ovid’s meth-wracked runaway sister, Thena, who appears almost entirely as a video projection to demonstrate the void her absence has left in Ovid’s life.

The genesis of the play was in another play, Palo Alto High’s production of Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses, also based on the Ovid myths, which entranced Franco so much she returned to see every show. 

“There was something about the myths that I needed to write about,” Franco said. “I’m so into high school culture that I thought I would make the myths contemporary.” 

First to roll out was her retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice: In the Franco version, Orpheus is a moody folkie who can’t resist texting his very reluctant muse that one last time.

“I write in the morning, and I’d put notes in a folder,” Franco said. “Pretty soon I had enough for a book.” Metamorphosis: Junior Year, Franco’s first young-adult novel, was published by Candlewick Press in 2009. The Palo Alto Children’s Theatre commissioned Franco’s theatrical adaptation of the book last year. Franco said the Palo Alto Teen Arts Council contributed valuable insights to the play.

“It’s important to me to let them have their voice,” Franco said. “Everyone was invested in the play, because we had teen input.” This is Franco’s normal practice, she said. “When I go to speak at schools, I don’t always talk all the time. I listen to what (the students) have to say to me.”

Metamorphosis: Junior Year will be performed Monday at 5 p.m.; Thursday at 4:30 p.m.; Friday at 7 p.m.; and Saturday at 2 and 7 p.m. at the Palo Alto Children’s Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Rd., Palo Alto. The Saturday performance was videotaped for a documentary by Franco’s actor-son, James. Tickets are $12/adults and $8/children. The box office phone is 650-463-4970.

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