Liliana Padilla’s insightful, too often rambling How To Defend Yourself takes place in an NCAA workout room where determined and well-intentioned Brandi (Talia Ryder) is instructing several women – and sometimes two men – in the art of taking care of themselves when faced with physical danger. If you’ve already guessed this is an exercise in 21st century women’s empowerment, you’re on the right track.
Much of the first part of the intermissionless 110-minute drama-with-some-comic-leavening concentrates on a committed instructor leading four relatively eager street-fighting wannabes and a couple of male pals through warm-ups and routines. She has them using as defensive weapons whatever items they may have handy (pens, for instance, to the carotid artery) or, failing anything immediately available, using their own bodies (elbows, hips, fingers).
While guiding good but combative friend Kara (Sarah Marie Rodriguez), compliant Mojdeh (Ariana Mahallati), aggressive Diana (Gabriela Ortega) and timid Nikki (Amaya Braganza) – and in time Andy (Sebastian Delascasas) and Eggo (Jayson Lee) – through their paces, leader Brandi tries to keep her charges engaged.
Nonetheless, occasional interpersonal confidences and conflicts interrupt the intense workouts. Further worrying the participants is Susannah, a chum to a few of them and a hospitalized rape victim who’s suffered at the brutal hands of Spencer and Tom, two (unseen) others of their acquaintance.
The characters, pulled from their drills by recollection of the frightening incident – an ugly event that renders their current training all the more urgent – also engage in banter about daily activities, activities about which today’s teenagers feel free to swap stories. Among the pastimes these kids toss around aren’t movies they’ve seen, music catching their ears or books they’re reading. They’re preoccupied with masturbation habits, fellatio episodes, and how and when they last had intercourse or attempted to but didn’t follow through.
Not that they employ the above invoked socially acceptable terms. They express themselves with words gleefully blurted out nowadays on city streets everywhere, And it could be that only the prudish would question Kara’s admitting that one imaginative day she “sprayed Mr. Clean into my vagina.” (Be advised that no spoken footnote warns “Don’t try this at home.”)
On the surface Padilla looks to be focusing on physical defense, on drills, on the clever escapes that Brandi promises will succeed every time. And the production goes heavily into backing up that intention. To effectuate as much, the playwright has not only supplied a graphic and physically demanding script. Padilla also co-directs with Tony-winner (Hadestown) Rachel Chavkin and Steph Paul. How to Defend Yourself further boasts Paul as movement director, Rocio Mendez as fight director, and Ann James as intimacy coordinator.
Oh, yes, at How to Defend Yourself, they mean business. One big pay-off (maybe the biggest) is one escape Brandi demonstrates: an effective turnaround wherein an attacker lying on the victim is foiled by the person on bottom raising his or her hips and quickly rolling over to reverse the previous position.
Watching three exercising pairs execute the maneuver certainly strikes audience members as a hoot. Some patrons may even be thinking that here’s an instance where the movement director and the intimacy coordination had to have worked hand-in-glove.
Speaking of the pelvis-lifting-reverse-thrust, the ebullient moment comes when, already establishing the setting and plot trajectory, Padilla then allows the script to indulge Brandi and the others a bit too excessively at the adolescent and post-adolescent sexual sounding off, seeming to forget the old saw about there being little information more boring than other people’s sex lives.
This is especially unnecessary when with more than a modicum of wisdom, Padilla, who uses they/them pronouns, has something strong going on. They call the work How to Defend Yourself, readily implying that they means physical defense. They only emphasizes her purpose with Brandi’s course offered in an antiseptic center space. (You-Shin Chen is the set designer.)
As the interactions become increasingly extended, however, the defense about which Padilla is speaking hints more heavily at psychological defense. They want to show how less than prepared this group is to defend themselves from their associates and from themselves. The characters may be maturing young adults, but not yet are they displaying advanced maturation. Watch, for example, what Brandi exhibits before final blackout.
Consciously or unconsciously, playwright Padilla might have picked up something packed into current fourth-year-pandemic vibes. These days there are those in psychology circles wondering how the initial lockdown and subsequent months – marked as they have been by increased isolation – have affected men and women. How has major change altered their grips on reality? How have things affected the ability to defend one’s assaulted psychic self?
Which brings up the final brief and initially perplexing How to Defend Yourself segments. The exercise room’s walls unexpectedly lower, literally and figuratively. Brandi and crew are viewed in other rooms continuing their lives. The meaning is obscure. Or isn’t? Is Padilla announcing that these figures have come to terms with what they’ve learned of successful protection? Are they newly primed to expand their bodies and minds? Whatever – and despite the drama’s flaws – this playwright already gotten a pressing message across.
How to Defend Yourself opened March 13, 2023, at New York Theatre Workshop and runs through April 2. Tickets and information: nytw.org
