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NEWS
UF Alumnus' Play to Open in February
By Kiri Walton, "The Gainesville Sun"
Neal Utterback's the stuff
Gator Nation commercials are made of.
He's written the great
American Western, a new play debuting next week at the University of
Florida, his alma mater.
He's teamed up with his
former college professor, David Shelton, who's retiring after 32 years
at the end of the semester and is performing his last role as the spirit
of John Cody Jones in the play.
American Western runs
from Feb. 2 to 11 at the Constans Theatre and is the playwright's third
play.
The plot is about Lt.
Daniel Boone, who goes to a small Midwestern town to bury a dead
soldier. The story unravels as the characters set out on a quest to "do
the right thing," even if it means harming others in the process. The
set includes a lake filled with water and the cast includes a team of
veteran actors, such as Hippodrome veteran Sara Morsey.
Utterback said he is not
used to such an extravagant set. In New York, costs are so high that the
set typically consists of "little black cubes." The humorous play
revolves around themes of cowboy romanticism, betrayal and survival.
"There's a lot of humor in
it. The strange conglomeration of characters like a transvestite Indian
and a pregnant female sheriff," Shelton said. "It has very contemporary
issues that are going on right now."
The play's director is
Kevin Marshall. For him, the father of a soldier now in Iraq on his
second term of duty, the play hits very close to home since it follows a
soldier back from war. "These people are survivors," Marshall said of
the characters.
But more than that, he
said the way the characters deal with moral dilemmas, betrayal and the
death of a loved one made American Western a play he wanted to direct.
From the very moment he
started reading it, Marshall said he could not put it down. "The
characters just leapt off the page," Marshall said. "I was struck by (Utterback's)
audacity to take on all these different things."
The performances on Feb. 3
and 4 will have "talkbacks" immediately following the show so that
audience members have the opportunity to ask questions and provide
feedback to the actors, as well as to Utterback, who ultimately wants to
take the show back to New York and is searching for investors.
"I'm excited to see how
the audience responds," Marshall said.
Tickets are available
through the University Box Office. For more information, call (352)
392-1653 or visit the University Box Office Web site at
www.union.ufl.edu/ubo.
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