Local Heroes

There are prices to be paid in dramatic focus, structure and depth, and references that not everyone knows enough about to find funny. But sometimes revealing the local does more. The Dugan story reflects characteristics of the North Coast, but in doing so it reveals something about many other small towns, counter to media images. The kind of differences and diversity symbolized by transsexual lesbian Terry Dugan (and based on a real story — see Donald Forrest’s moving explanation in the program) is almost always associated with big cities — and “San Francisco values.” But the truth is that they are present in these smaller places, though perhaps less obviously than here on the North Coast. So the shame, guilt and conflict portrayed in this story may exist even more strongly there, and extends to all kinds of differences, not just this one. And the process of forgiveness — including self-forgiveness — or the failure to find it, is a more universal drama of real life.

In locating an essential drama in the local, there is usually an element of the universal. Being human, the drama is shared, and the community is partly created by seeing it enacted.

You can get that universality at the movies sometimes, too. But what you can’t get is the same kind of intimacy when the people on stage and the people in the audience face each other.

An aspect of this was imprinted on my consciousness some years ago at a small theatre production in Pittsburgh of Arthur Miller’s play, The Creation of the World and Other Business. Though it’s comedic, the play deals with weighty themes of good and evil, individuality and community, fate and freedom. The audience was very close to the action, and I had my Satori moment when I saw right in front of me God’s bare feet. That is, the bare feet of the actress playing God. Somehow that made the play real and present. These were real people struggling with these big questions, as the human author did, and as we in the audience do.

There is something about real bodies on the stage — at times uncomfortable, and yet vitally human. Audiences and actors breathing the same air demonstrate that apparently abstract questions may really be the most basic concerns of the human community. So how do you combine life and art, the everyday with its meaning? Create art. Present it live.

Korbel IV finishes its run this weekend, July 3-6, with the Festival’s adult cabaret, Red Light in Blue Lake, after the July 5 performance. Ferndale Rep has its annual July 4 show, and will open its senior show, Make Mine Metamucil, by local newsie and playwright Dave Silverbrand on the July 11 weekend in Ferndale, before moving it to the Eureka Theater July 26. North Coast Rep opens its next show, Lend Me A Tenor, July 17. Eureka Theater also has summer classes in improvisation, commedia, acting and movement for adults, teens and children. Info at www.sanctuarystage.com.

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