An intricate snake tattoo winds from one arm, loops up and around the back and ends at the other wrist.
This tattoo, worn by Lily Talevski’s character Tania, drives the plot of the Bloomington Playwrights Project’s production of the musical “TOAST,” which opens Friday.
“Some people think I’m the snake, I’m the one that constantly is shedding out of anyone’s grasp,” Talevski said. “For me, it’s a form of rebirth, constantly evolving and finding yourself over and over, because that’s what a snake does by shedding its skin.”
The play begins when 22-year-old Tania, who left home at 17, returns to her hometown of New Orleans to find her ex-boyfriend, a tattoo artist. His name is Snake, and she wants him to finish the partially completed ink across her body.
At first, finding Snake is just a means to an end because she wants to enter a nationwide tattoo competition to win a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
Finding out Snake has cancer puts their project on a deadline.
“All of these things and moments and memories, they are finite,” Talevski said. “None of it lasts forever. It’s going to end in loss one way or another. Everyone here knows that, and that’s what makes life so much more explosive.”
Writer Sam Carner and composer Derek Gregor adapted the musical from the novella of the same title by Rex Rose. Carner said the eclectic community of characters lent itself to musical theater.
“A sense of community is always the core of any musical, and this had such a rich group of misfits,” Carner said. “If there’s one thing that musical theater does well, it’s telling a story of a group of people coming together.”
A DJ, a drag queen, a rebel runaway, a tattoo artist and a British man who completes a love triangle are some of the characters that make the story interesting, Talevski said.
“Everyone is so kooky and wild. They’re all the renegades that have been kicked out or left for their own reasons,” Talevski said. “They come to this place that is no man’s land and they make it their own.”
Many scenes in the show take place in a falling-apart nightclub, where all of these colorful misfits come together to make their own path after Hurricane Katrina, Carner said.
Early in the show, all of the club-goers raise a glass to all of their friends who are no longer present at the party.
“You get to see how a group of people that are still standing are coping with this trauma of a hurricane via alcohol, music and having a great time in this nightclub,” Andrew Minkin, who plays Snake, said. “The energy is electric.”
Carner said he and Gregor wanted to create a piece with kinetic energy. Characters flip, spin and lift each other across the stage to a mix of New Orleans-style jazz with electronic and house music and flashing lights.
“Some of the time we have sentimental stuff going on, other times you’re in the club and the bass is banging,” Talevski said. “It’s so alive. When you come to this, you are at a concert in a club, but you’re also watching the saddest movie of your life, but the funniest movie too.”
