A ghostlight in theatre tradition is the single light kept burning in the theatre after all others have been extinguished. It is one of the many rituals adopted by theatre folk such as never saying “Good luck,” but using “Break a leg,” instead. Or the prohibition on mentioning “The Scottish Play.” The ghostlight has a practical function, to ensure there is adequate light for anyone leaving the space, but it also forms part of theatre superstition – it is kept on to keep the spirits of actors and theatre people company as they haunt the boards they trod. Candlelight, gaslight, electric light – a practice passed down through generations and reaching those as celebrated as Sarah Bernhardt to amateur theatre companies. Theatre is an everlasting artform embraced by all cultures.
Writer and co-director Kelly O’Sullivan along with Alex Thompson use the metaphor carefully in their sublime and touching Ghostlight. Dan Mueller (Keith Kupferer) is a blue-collar construction worker in Chicago who is haunted by a loss that has become unspeakable for him. His sixteen-year-old daughter, Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) is furious and acting out at school. His wife Sharon (Tara Mallen) is trying to keep the family on an even keel, but it is becoming more challenging as Dan’s unwillingness to engage with how she and Daisy feel is driving a wedge between the once close-knit group.
In the Mueller’s suburban home, the strains of ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’’ from Rogers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! accompany the opening of the curtains. Dan’s day is going to be anything but beautiful. The sound he is used to is that of a jackhammer on a city street as he conducts work. He’s dealing with phone calls about a legal hearing coming up, angry drivers, annoyed pedestrians, and a phone call from Sharon telling him he must attend Daisy’s school immediately. Daisy is about to be expelled for shoving a teacher who wouldn’t let her go to the bathroom during class. Daisy gives a reasoned and hysterical explanation as to why it’s fair to have ‘moved the fat cow’ who deserved it because she uses the word “irregardless.” Daisy, is, quite simply, out of fucks to give. The Muellers can’t afford to enrol her in another school and the principal is sympathetic after ‘all she has been through’ – so if Daisy agrees to therapy the school will be able to reduce her punishment to a suspension.
Daisy isn’t displaying average teenage rebellion. She’s quick-witted and intelligent, sarcastic and very much alive, but her life has been clouded by her own pain and by her father’s anger. Sharon is an elementary school drama and music teacher who is almost invisible to Dan unless he’s talking about the upcoming case. Daisy and Sharon are stuck inside Dan’s trauma response to what happened to the family, and they can’t reclaim themselves or their lives until Dan makes it possible for them to do so as a unit.
The stress becomes unbearable for Dan one day at work and he snaps when a driver almost hits him and then abuses him. Watching from the sidewalk is Rita (Dolly De Leon) who previously tussled with him about the noise. Dan’s friend and workmate Mikey (Matthew C. Yee) can’t de-escalate the situation and suggests Dan clocks out for the day. Rita, who earlier was seen arguing with someone as they stormed away from a worn-down cinema/theatre pulls Dan into her world. “What’s in there?” he asks. “Your salvation,” she replies and then tells him she’s just joking – it’s an amateur theatre group rehearsing and he’s about to stand in for the actor who left. Dan says he’s not an actor, but that is of no consequence because all he needs to do is read from a book. “You can read, can’t you?” Despite the answer being yes, Dan is not ready for a table read with a group of eccentric community theatre actors, and he’s not good at “words.” The harried but patient director, Lanora (Hannah Dworkin) lets him know none of that matters – just read and everything else comes later.
Dan is quietly fascinated by the table read and the joy the people get out of dramatic reading. They are about to stage Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Dan is reading the part of Lord Capulet. He’s not taking in the words he’s reading but there is something magical about what he’s seeing even though he can’t define what it is. When he gets home, he has something he can share with Daisy – whose dream it was to be an actor on Broadway. He asks her about Romeo and Juliet, and she recites the prologue. She then sits him down to watch Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (“It’s old but it’s a classic”) where she makes jokes that Leonardo DiCaprio doesn’t look like that anymore. Dan says, “They’re so young.” They don’t finish the film and later Dan asks her “I know they get together, but what happens?” Daisy rolls her eyes. Did he not listen to the prologue? It’s a tragedy.
Dan has felt like an outsider in his family although he couldn’t admit it. Daisy and Sharon were both involved in theatre. As much as Dan loved to watch what they did, and enjoyed it with pride in their accomplishments, he didn’t understand it. Dan doesn’t believe he is capable of that kind of leap of imagination. But during his time with Rita, Lanora, the frenetic Lucian (Tommy Rivera-Vega), the jovial Jonah (H. B. Ward), the irrepressible Greg (Dexter Zollicoffer) and the gentle Moira (Alma Washington) he begins to understand the sanctuary and community involved in amateur theatrics. What he doesn’t understand is Romeo and Juliet. Or to be more precise, he knows the story too well, too intimately. The skills he has learned with acting and trust exercises are assisting him to understand himself – the empathy that actors use to inhabit characters surprises him as Lucian of all people is able to pick an emotional response from him. When Lucian asks Dan, “Are you lonely?” in an exercise Dan’s facial reaction registers as surprise. He’s surprised someone asked. It’s also true – he is lonely.
Dan won’t listen to Daisy’s pleas for him to join in with her therapy sessions. He yells at Sharon when she tries to plant flowers around a tree in their garden. O’Sullivan’s script slowly throws in the context for why everything has fallen apart. The Muellers were once a family of four, until Brian, still a teenager, died by suicide. The court case and depositions are driven by Dan wanting to sue Brian’s girlfriend’s family for wrongful death. Both Daisy and Sharon have agreed to the lawsuit but what they didn’t agree to is being left in limbo and not being allowed to grieve Brian or be sad. Because Dan’s mind is focussed on a practical vindication, he is extending the period where Daisy and Sharon must remain “calm and reasonable” to court standards.
Dan isn’t a bad man, far from it. He genuinely adores Daisy, and he loved Brian. He wasn’t socialised to be in touch with his emotions. Lanora says to him, “Many of us live our lives repressing our emotions because outside they don’t help us.” Which is why when he is asked to imagine his child has died as Lord Capulet Dan is finally able to share his pain and the truth about Brian with the theatre group after he screams that they have to change the end. Romeo and Juliet must wake up. It’s a waste. He is embraced by people who have known him for only a few weeks but are beginning to be given more of him than he has given his family in a year. He’s also lying to Sharon and Daisy about what he is doing – saying he’s drinking and playing cards with Mikey.
Daisy is too clever to believe that’s all that is going on. She’s noticed Dan is different. He’s still refusing to talk about his feelings, and he’s still yelling and storming off, but he’s also asking her questions and doing things which seem out of character. He takes Daisy for some batting cage practice, and he looks at her and says, “You’re happy.” She laughs and brushes it off – but that’s a radical change for Dan. Eventually she follows him and finds him rehearsing his new role as Romeo (the other Romeo quit because he didn’t want to kiss Rita because she was too old) and yells at him for having an affair. Or is it a threesome? What the hell is going on? Why didn’t Dan tell Daisy about this? He was embarrassed. Put Daisy near a stage and her eyes shine. She stopped acting because of her own guilt around Brian, but perhaps there is a way this tiny production and Dan’s new friends (especially Rita) can help where nothing else has?
Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson balance tragedy and humour with skill and depth. Dolly de Leon’s Rita is a brilliant firecracker driven by her own anger and resentment at never making it in the professional acting world. She has no problem punching people who insult her, and she relishes her reputation as being a bit of a monster – but she’s the first person to see that Dan needs to “be someone else” for a while. Rita connects immediately to Daisy and her talent and vivacity. Katherine Mallen Kupferer shines with a ferocity of spirit and aching vulnerability. Both Dolly and Katherine give powerhouse performances – funny, resilient, but also hurt by the world. There isn’t a performance not worth praising in Ghostlight – O’Sullivan and Thompson using the adage ‘there are no small parts’ as they create their tribute to amateur dramatics and the transcendent potency of using art to communicate and understand emotions.
Lucian might seem as if he’s a terrible over-actor with no tangible ‘skill’ but he loves what he is doing so much and by extension loves the people he’s doing it with. When he calls Dan a “Lady McB” and an “Iago” for being given the part of Romeo it’s not only a wonderful bit about jealousies even in the smallest productions, but it also speaks to how much he values Shakespeare. Moira doesn’t really understand the language of Shakespeare, but she knows it’s beautiful. Dan, never an actor, becomes one in an essential ‘role’ in his life so he can return to his most important role – father and husband – with an understanding that life and emotions are complex and in imagining what another is going through empathy is built.
Dan doesn’t get off scott free for what he has put Sharon and Daisy through. Sharon’s anger isn’t going to be instantly lifted because Dan has reached emotional epiphany – but the seeds of true healing have finally been sown. As she watches her daughter and husband on stage – he Romeo and she Mercutio – she is overwhelmed by everything she has been holding in for his sake. The play itself is filmed like a mystical experience – the technical difficulties (an immense storm outside kills the power) and Dan falling off Juliet’s balcony, are there to remind the audience that they are watching people in a high school auditorium. But Luke Dyra’s camera moves in to capture the empyreal mood of what is felt, not necessarily how it is perceived by everyone. Linda Lee’s production design is deliberately too sophisticated for the place and space. O’Sullivan and Thompson want the play to be as beloved and beautiful as it is to the company performing it and the people who have come to support those in the work.
Kevin Kupferer is a veteran stage professional and resident of Chicago. His rendering of Dan comes from the experience of being a bit player in films and TV but mostly working in the environment he is ‘learning’ to be a part of. He’s also playing husband and father to his own wife and daughter who are also stage actors. Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson found the perfect man to play Dan. He resonates as an ‘everyman’ who believed his role was to go to work and provide for his family, leaving the other parts to someone who is good with that “stuff” – emotions, words, passion. Kevin Kupferer’s small gestures show that Dan’s attentive to practical needs and those were for the large part his way of communicating care. Watch carefully for how often Dan’s jacket ends up on someone else’s shoulders in case they are cold. He takes people “as he finds them” in his estimation because that is what he thought he needed when people were seeing him.
Kelly O’Sullivan’s script gives grace to almost all the characters. Ghostlight allows the audience into a world of specificity and universality. The film aches with love and loss, connection and disconnection, and dreams broken and yet to be realised. Finding a part of yourself as a “middle-aged” Juliet or realising that you aren’t Laurey from Oklahoma! and the best role is Ado Annie, or for a moment being Lord Capulet and then Romeo in a chaotic version of the bard performed with people who exist with and for you in those moments is reaching into your soul. Ghostlight is brave, tender, exquisite, and unforgettable. A profound and stirring experience.
Directors: Kelly O’Sullivan, Alex Thompson
Cast: Keith Kupferer, Tara Mallen, Dolly De Leon
Writer: Kelly O’Sullivan
Producers: Pierce Cravens, Chelsea Krant, Edwin Linker, Alex Thompson
Music: Quinn Tsan
Cinematography: Luke Dyra
Editing: Mike S. Smith
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