The first play I saw performed at Western State College was an attempt at Amadeus. It was... pretty... bad. Not that the attempt wasn't a little admirable, but the department wasn't quite capable of pulling it off. Trying to do a play about Mozart when you don't have a good enough relationship with your own music department to have a Real soprano instead of a recording that cuts in a second after the actress begins singing isn't the greatest idea.
Western probably still isn't capable of doing Amadeus. Especially with their main stages all broken apart for remodel. But the department is getting better and better. I especially like it when they try something original. Their latest play, entitled Resilience and written by professor Paul A. Edwards (and his ensemble) at making their own stuff. Resilience, written by professor Paul A. Edwards, was impressive. It was humorful, it was artistic, it was entertaining. All the while having philosophical and political implications. "Enjoyable and Thought-Provoking". What else is there to put into a play?
Acting. Good acting. 'Tis the weakness at Western State College. The students aren't bad actors, though some of them border it from time to time, but they aren't as impressive as the writers in the Gunnison valley. Which, apparently, are them.
As this play probably will not be seen in its entierty again for a while, if ever, by anyone who wasn't involved in its production and has a DVD, I don't feel bad about Analysing the work for a bigger portion of this review:
First, Resilience is a story about a small town TV station, its employees, and their little domestic lives in a slow-moving mountain town. With characters who are, by and large, not very slow moving. Going with this theme, there were old '50s commercials shown between each scene which turn out to be the plays best joke and compositional element. The audience laughed harder at that then at anything in the play. And harder at that than I have heard most audiences laugh at anything. The advertising techniques they used back then are pretty silly.
The other simple and running gag in the play was a hyper-actively tweaked producer who doesn't have any idea how bloody crazy she is. She gets a little tiresome by the end, but is an important key in the play.
The second big plot element in the play is the romantic story between an over-worked employee of the TV station who is slowly turning into her crazy boss and a local and green t-shirt maker who's running apprehensively for County Commissioner.
Underneath all of it is a theme of "Sustainability" because Edwards wanted to write a play that has to do with WSC's "Year of Sustainability". It is faithful in its depictions of reality. I especially like the scene where some peace-loving 'hippies' (for lack of a better word) throw their recyclable cups away right after the restaurateur told them of her new recycling system! The play was full of little points like that, including the final climatic crux: for the station's "Be Local" campaign, they ordered t-shirts off line.
...Even though her beau is a t-shirt maker....
Ooops.
Despite how trite that sounds, the play is well woven and reminds me a little of plays by Arthur Miller. I quite enjoyed it and hope that other little theaters in little towns play it someday.
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