‘Faux It Till You Make It’
Via Might 4
Enviornment Stage, 1101 Sixth St., S.W.
Tickets begin at $59
Arenastage.org
A farce requires teamwork. And Larissa FastHorse’s “Faux It Till You Make It” now at Enviornment Stage is not any exception.
The well timed comedy focuses on Native American nonprofits fractiously housed in a shared house. Friction rises when rivals River (Amy Brenneman), a white girl working within the Indigenous world, goes up in opposition to the extra genuine Wynona (Shyla Lefner) to win a profitable Native-funded grant.
Whereas Brenneman (finest identified for TV’s Judging Amy) is undeniably a giant draw, it takes a gaggle collaboration to hit marks, land jokes, and pull off the well-executed bodily comedy together with all these rigorously timed door slams.
As members of the six-person “Faux It” solid, Brandon Delsid and Eric Stanton Betts, each out actors of partly indigenous ancestry, contribute to the mayhem. Respectively, Delsid and Betts play Krys and Mark, a pair of two-spirited Native People who meet farcically cute and luxuriate in one of many play’s extra satisfying arcs.
For Krys, each engaging man is a possible subsequent fling, however when Mark, good-looking and comparatively reserved, arrives on the scene, it’s one thing fully completely different.
Each onstage and typically off, Betts performs the straight man to Delsid’s waggishness. However when it comes all the way down to actual life enterprise, the buddies are on the identical web page: not solely are the L.A.-based, up-and-coming actors intensely critical about their movie and stage careers, however they’re additionally notably engaged within the themes of Indigenous Individuals present in “Faux It.”
On a current Wednesday following a matinee and an viewers talkback, they had been prepared for a cellphone interview.
In establishing whose voice was whose, Delsid clarified with “I’m the one who sounds somewhat like a Valley lady.”
WASHINGTON BLADE: Brandon, you’ve been with the present since its early work-shopping days in 2022 and thru its debut in Los Angeles and now Washington. Have issues developed?
BRANDON DELSID: Undoubtedly. I’ve grown up within the final couple of years and so has my character; it’s arduous to know the place I finish and Kry begins. There’s been an actual melding.
Eric and I are each queer, and to get to play these roles which are so human, imperfect, horny, and fascinating is admittedly joyful.
As queer artists you don’t at all times get the prospect to do work like this. So many tales are queer trauma, which is extremely necessary, but it surely’s liberating to really feel pleasure and trip it off into the sundown, which, with out revealing an excessive amount of, is sort of what we get to do.
BLADE: There’s some race shifting in “Faux It” notably with regard to “pretendian” (a pejorative time period describing an individual who has falsely claimed Indigenous standing).
ERIC STANTON BETTS: The previous few years I’ve been on a journey with my cultural identification and place on the planet. I’m a blended BIPOC artist, my dad is Black and Native American by means of the Cherokee tribe and my mother is white.
Since 2020, I’ve tried to determine the place I belong on this cultural historical past that I haven’t had a tie to all through my life; it’s gratifying to seek out my approach again to my indigeneity and be welcomed.
Within the play, race shifting is launched by farce. Nevertheless it’s by no means in a disrespectful approach; it’s by no means mocked or completed in a approach to remove from others. The playwright parallels race shifting with gender fluidity.
DELSID: However in life, there are folks posing as Indigenous, actively taking grants, and the play goes there, we don’t maintain again. Larissa, our playwright, has made it clear that she’s not making an attempt to determine it out for us. With that in thoughts, we hope folks depart the theater and curious to study extra.
BLADE: Mark arrives sort of the center of some loopy drama, bringing alongside a jolt of romance.
BETTS: Yeah, after I present up, we’re all type of shot out of a cannon, struggling to maintain up with the preliminary lie.
DESLID: A really homosexual cannon.
BLADE: What’s up subsequent for you two?
BETTS: Each Brandon and I are up for a similar half in a TV pilot, so one in every of us could also be getting some superb information. I even have a Tyler Perry movie popping out quickly [he plays a model, not an unfamiliar gig for Betts].
DELSID: Developing, I’ve a recurring half on HBO’s “The Rehearsal,” and a supporting half in “June and John,” a John Besson movie. However doing “Faux It Till You Make It” in L.A. and now D.C. has been a particular time in our lives. It’s 23/7 togetherness. There’s that hour for sleep.
