It’s almost a comfort to know, in a schadenfreude kind of way, that the problems we all struggled with as young people haven’t gone away. But how a dozen Fort Lewis College students choose to address those problems tells me that we’ve come a long way in coping with them.
The theater students will stage “GUTS” this weekend in Roshong Recital Hall before heading to Los Angeles on Monday to stage the devised theater production at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. Fort Lewis also will stage a devised production created by professor Kathryn Moller, “Not so Fairy Tale,” as well as last year’s play, “Sun and Room.”
The students created “GUTS” after a 10-day workshop with renowned performance theater artist Tim Miller, who usually spends his time in the theater communities of New York and Los Angeles. Moller and Miller created their works in response to this year’s theme at KCACTF, “I’m Like You, I’m Not Like You.”
“GUTS” is on theme. Each student wrote his or her own segment of the production, and the rest of the cast contributes. The segments are at times brutally personal, dealing with issues of insecurity, sex, abuse, drugs and alcohol, and just about anything else a young adult can be expected to confront.
The honesty is moving; Kayla “KC” Caimi relates an incident of child abuse, Brianna DeVore reveals the difficulty of remaining abstinent in today’s campus culture and Kenny Breece tells what it’s like to be a 22-year-old gay man in the same world. And Scotty Smith’s self-investigation into his past as a “ladies man” might be enough to make some in the audience blush. It’s powerful stuff.
The stories are graphically told with no censorship on subject matter, language or nudity. The program is unlike any “typical” theater production. It’s not a linear narrative, and there’s no discernible beginning or end. The segments and active cast members overlap, but there’s no doubt as to who is the central figure in each.
“We each brought our own life experience,” said junior Brad Abeyta, who is the central figure in the opening scene. “It’s an exploration of things in our own lives we’d like to transform. Tim got us started, and by addressing the issues in our lives, we turned them into these performance pieces.”
Miller understandably is proud of his students and wrote as much in his program notes: “This ... has been an exciting and charged exploration into creating performance work from our lives, dreams, obsessions, peeves, memories and desires. It has been a great pleasure and inspiration to create our community and jump into this original ensemble work. The search for the narratives and metaphors of the body is a crucial beginning to knowing ourselves and can be a juicy motor for creating original performance material. I want to thank the artists for diving in so bravely and being ready to dig that extra foot (or mile!) into these gnarly, moist and tricky terrains!”
Proceeds from this weekend’s performance will go toward the travel expenses of attending KCACTF in Los Angeles.
ted@durangoherald.com
If you go
The Fort Lewis College Theatre Department will present the student production “GUTS,” directed by Tim Miller, at 7:30 p.m. today, Saturday and Sunday in Roshong Recital Hall inside Jones Hall. Tickets cost $12, $10 for seniors/children/non-FLC students and free for FLC students, available by phone at 247-7657, online at www.durangotickets.com or at the door.
The performers are Austin Minard, James Rollins, Kenneth James Breece, Molly Quinn, Scotty Smith, Bradley Michael Abeyta, KC Caimi, Jessica Fairchild, Brianna DeVore, Hannah Mae Bernat, Robert Eugene Harrington-Megason and Chloe Speshock.
This show contains nudity and adult themes and language.
