`No one ever understood my wild and secret ways,” says Lulu Lamartine, one of the lusty, independent women who stride through “Love Medicine,” Louise Erdrich’s haunting novel about the complicated histories of two families on a North Dakota reservation. Lulu is only one piece in Erdrich’s complicated fictional mosaic, which depicts the poignant and often funny contradictions of Native Americans who struggle to live fully in the face of cultural dislocation.
Meryl Friedman, who adapted for the theater and is directing “Love Medicine,” has a long relationship with Louise Erdrich’s fiction. “Her books have such a big heart. You feel like they’re going to explode, there’s so much passion and so much raging emotion, almost bigger than the pages can hold. There’s a telling phrase in `Love Medicine’: `Love is a stony road, we know that for sure.’ Erdrich explores all of the intricacies of that stony road and that journey.”
In a theater community where multicultural casting usually means a token ethnic representation in a predominantly white cast, Friedman gathered a genuinely multicultural cast. Only one of her actors is Caucasian — the rest include Native American, Filipino, South African and Latino actors.
“The book is about all these crossed identities. It seemed right to me that the actors who weren’t Native should be not white.”
Friedman’s greatest theatrical coup was recruiting Muriel and Gloria Miguel, members of New York’s internationally renowned troupe Spiderwoman Theatre, to play the elder love rivals Lulu and Marie. “They brought a wonderful presence as performers in addition to their insights as women and as Natives. They’re wonderful storytellers; they can look an audience in the eye.”
Muriel Miguel, who founded and directs Spiderwoman, commented that this project is unusual for them. “I once promised myself I would never work on a project where the primary people in power are white people. Still, Meryl stuck her neck out, taking on a Native story.”
Miguel had to be teacher and ensemble member, and found herself caught between representing universal themes and the specifics of Native culture. “It is everyman’s story.”
Before opening night, Friedman was nervous but excited. Commenting about the challenge of honoring Native American culture while dramatizing the universal themes of the novel, she said, “As a culture, we’re to a point with political correctness that everyone is afraid to breathe on anyone else. I find it overwhelming sometimes. But this seems good. There’s something about watching all these cultures come together on stage to tell this story that works.”
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“Love Medicine” runs through May 28 at Lifeline Theatre, 6912 N. Glenwood Ave. For more information, call 773-761-4477.
