CONFETTI KIDS • SATE

SATE opens its “Season of Motherhood” with a world premiere by London-based playwright, Aurora Behlke. Commissioned by the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival for the Confluence Regional Writers Project, Confetti Kids is a tight 90 or so minutes, and a fascinating watch, whether you’re familiar with its subject matter or not.

In the early 1940s, tons of uranium were processed at the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works plant just north of downtown St. Louis for World War II’s Manhattan Project. As a result of improperly stored nuclear waste near Lambert Airport, radioactive byproducts leached into North St. Louis County’s Coldwater Creek, exposing several municipalities and neighborhoods along the creek’s 19-mile stretch to significantly higher rates of cancers and autoimmune conditions. Decades of government authorities downplaying known risks have made remediation a long, difficult struggle for residents of affected neighborhoods -- a struggle that continues today. Cleanup efforts and investigations have been underway for years, despite federal agency foot-dragging.

NO EXIT • SATE

French philosopher and playwright Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1944 rendering of Hell doesn’t involve pitchforks or brimstone, but there is torment nonetheless. In a new translation by Alyssa Ward and a shrewd staging directed by Bess Moynihan, three members of the newly deceased are escorted to the infernal regions to a sparsely furnished room, where not having a toothbrush will be the least of their problems.

Inès (Sarah Morris), Estelle (Rachel Tibbetts)

and Garcin (Shane Signorino).

Photo credit: Joey Rumpell

Garcin (Shane Signorino), a journalist, is the first to arrive, ushered in by Katy Keating as a grim valet who has heard all of the initial questions from newcomers before. He’s soon joined by postal worker in life, Inès (Sarah Morris), and Estelle (Rachel Tibbetts), a conceited socialite. Garcin, practical and self-possessed, thinks staying to themselves is the best plan of action. Estelle, who needs a mirror almost as desperately as she needs a man to seduce, angles for Garcin’s attention. Inès, the sharpest and most cynical of the three, spends most of her time lusting after Estelle, and is the most upfront about the cruelty she inflicted on those in her life. After brief glimpses of the goings on among the living back on earth, their past wrongs are eventually confessed, and the characters of these three souls are laid bare to each other without the convenience or comfort of pretense. The dynamics between these deceivers, murderers and cowards will doom them to spend the rest of time craving affection that will never be returned, and redemption that will never come.