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NEWS
Western brings war realities to life, and life to moral
questions
By Ashley Knaus,
"The Gainesville Sun"
It's a story about love,
betrayal, guilt, secrets and mystery, and it will come alive Friday -
its world premiere performance - at UF's Constans Theatre.
American Western,
written by UF alumnus Neal Utterback, sends complex characters on a
search for truth in a reflection of the first decade of the 21st
century. The play uses a Western motif with contemporary issues of war
and politics, all the while keeping the audience laughing.
It opens with Lt. Daniel
Boone of the U.S. Army traveling to Indiana to bury one of his soldiers,
Sergeant Patrick Flynn, who has died in the war.
The inciting incident in
the play is the funeral, where secrets and unexpected events unfold.
Someone even outs Flynn at his own funeral, says Kevin Marshall, the
director of UF's School of Theatre and Dance who directed American
Western.
"It's one of those rare
scripts; I read a lot of new scripts, and quite frankly, 10 pages in you
lose interest," Marshall says. "This one was just incredibly exciting
because the plot kept you enthralled throughout. The characters are
absolutely complex, wonderful, twisted people. It deals with very
serious subjects, but the playwright infuses the script with humor. It
deals with so many pertinent issues in a highly theatrical, dramatic,
comical way that it really lends itself to performance on stage."
While the play does raise
questions of war and politics, Utterback does little in the way
providing direct answers, Marshall says.
"This is part of what's
wonderful about theater," he says. "I find it most stimulating when you
go to a play and go home and have conversations in the car about what we
just saw, the interpretation of it. This play does that with a very
interesting, complex, multi-dimensional cast of characters. There is a
search for what is right, and as one character said, 'We can't all be
doing the right thing.' This is theater; it is not reality. But it is a
reflection of the world that we live in."
While the play might be
taking the stage for the first time, it will also serve as the last time
UF professor David Shelton will perform as a faculty member. Shelton,
who plays pioneer spirit John Cody Jones in American Western,
will be retiring after a 33-year-long career.
"It's wonderful when
someone has devoted their lives to our students here at UF," Marshall
says. "David has a reputation, and UF has a reputation because of David,
of this in-your-face acting style. I can tell you that his performance
in this play is just spectacular."
Shelton, who has followed
Utterback's career since his graduation, was actually the first to
receive the American Western script.
"His writing gets more and
more mature all the time," Shelton says. "Neal wanted me to act in it
and I was excited to do it. It's an opportunity for him to see it
presented in front of audience and see their reactions."
Intrigued by the cast of
characters and the contemporary situations, Shelton passed along the
script to Marshall.
"I thought to myself, this
is a really stage-worthy play," Marshall says. "The audience will be
surprised multiple times during the course of the play. They will laugh
and they will be concerned about the people in the play."
The play hit close to home
for Marshall, whose son was in his second, year-long deployment to Iraq
when he read the script for the first time.
"I have to say, it was
very difficult to read about a soldier coming back in a casket when you
have a child over there. It's just very unsettling to say the least. It
was creepy."
It was an easy decision
for Marshall to bring the script to the stage, and he's now been working
on the play for more than a year, sometimes consulting his son on
military protocol to add to the play's authenticity.
"I have a personal stake
in this, and it is such a thrill when the lights dim," he says. "It's so
exciting for these actors to bring the character to life for the first
time. They get to breathe life into the characters and take it from the
page to the stage."
Utterback, who lives in
New York, will attend this weekend's performances. Utterback and
Marshall will also be conducting 20-minute talkback sessions after the
performances on Saturday and Sunday, where audience members can give
their feedback to the playwright and director.
"Being a new play and
being an educational institution here, this is part of our research in
creative activity where we are able to bring words on the page to the
performance on stage. Part of that is getting feedback from audience on
what works, what didn't. To me everything is clear as day, but was there
any confusion for the audience?"
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