Chautauqua Theater Company Guest Artist Sharina Martin performs as Undine during a rehearsal of Fabulation Friday in Bratton Theater. CTC’s production of Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation opens today in Bratton.
Chautauqua Theater Company Guest Artist Sharina Martin, who plays the leading role of Undine Barnes Calles in CTC’s production of renowned playwright Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine, said the easiest way to play the character’s complicated nature isn’t to judge her, but to love her.
“I approached it wanting to understand her and to love her for every choice she made, whether I, Sharina, agreed with it or not,” she said. “That really has been it; just embodying her, her choices, her confusions and her trying to figure it out.”
Martin quickly discovered that she and Undine, who begins the story as a wealthy New York City publicist until her world suddenly turns upside down, share multiple similarities. They both grew up in Brooklyn, both went to a boarding school on a scholarship and have both felt like they were different.
“I understand what it feels like to try to fit in, to be made to feel like where you come from isn’t enough and have to be reminded that it’s more than enough; that you are more than enough with everything you bring into every room, and I think that’s at the heart of this play,” she said.
CTC’s production of Nottage’s Fabulation, which mixes satire with dark comedy to magnify concepts of racial stereotypes and societal norms, finishes previews at 2:30 p.m. today and officially opens at 6:30 p.m. tonight, with both performances in Bratton Theater.
As a graduate of Northwestern University who studied theater and African-American studies, Martin quickly developed a passion for plays depicting the lives of other Black individuals. In 2022, she joined the company of the Broadway revival of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, and she said she loves allowing audiences to see their own lives reflected in theater work.
She is also no stranger to Nottage’s award-winning plays and layered characters. She played Lily, a character she said many see as an antagonist, in the 2023 off-Broadway revival of Crumbs from the Table of Joy.
“Lynn creates such beautiful, complicated, problematic, wonderful, crazily joyous women” she said. “Every time I get to play one of her women, I see myself, I see my mother and I see my grandmother in them.”
She loves roles that can challenge audiences, and while diving into Undine’s toughness and resilience, she sees the character as someone who “has survived the best way that she felt she could.”
Through twists and turns, Undine begins the play as a wealthy businesswoman with invisible walls put up around her, trying to impress others of the same status. As she loses her wealth and returns to her working-class family she once abandoned, Martin said she finally begins to let others in.
“She starts from a place of having armor and weaving an idea of a person that she wants everybody to see, then in the end, she’s just stripped down and still moving forward,” Martin said. “But she’s letting other people in and listening, changing and growing.”
Throughout Fabulation, the actor also speaks directly to the audience, breaking the fourth wall and putting all the character’s thoughts and emotions on display — something that Martin said she can’t wait to explore.
“It’s almost as if she has a secret friend for the entire play, so I’m hoping to utilize the audience as my companion throughout this amazing, wild journey that I’m on,” she said.
Tackling the play’s intricate way of using satire to socially critique themes of stereotypes, race, identity and class is no easy feat, and Martin said director Candis C. Jones has led the cast and creative team with professionalism and care.
While playing Undine, she is getting to work with both familiar faces and new actors who she said bring new ways to “invent” the story.
As Chautauquans leave Bratton after witnessing a performance filled with laughter, struggle and heart, she hopes audiences remember who they are and never forget that they matter.
“Everyone is enough,” Martin said. “You are enough just as you are, and everything that you come into a room with is enough, and you should move forward like that. We don’t need to impress each other — we can just be.”
