Difficult times, like the ones we are living in today, often inspire creative people to get—creative.
Thus, Pegasus Theater Company members, distraught over the violent and oppressive direction the U.S. government is going, have decided to take a stand by mounting a resistance production they are calling Push Back.
“I thought, what can we do? We’re a theater company. We have a voice. We have an audience,” said Darlene Kersnar, who came up with the idea. “Of course, it won’t create a huge wave in the world. But at least we’re doing what we can.”
In November, they put out a request for submission of plays and, in less than two months, they received 19 newly-minted short plays that deal with the current political climate.
Out of the 19 plays the company received, the group selected three, and then added a fourth that it had produced several seasons back. The fourth play, Executive Order, explores something that seemed unlikely at the time, but was clearly prescient of what is happening now.
It deals with an executive order by a U.S. president that overrides the normal democratic process. The playwright, Davis resident L. H. Grant, apparently saw the seed of the current times back in 2018 when he wrote the play.
The other three plays are X’ed by Cary Pepper, a prolific playwright who lives in San Francisco; Tattoo by Ukiah resident Susan Sher; and King Fear, a satire of the current administration, based on Shakespeare’s King Lear. This play was written by Thomas Graven of Monte Rio and Lois Pearlman, who lives in Guerneville.
X’ed takes Donald Trump’s endless stream of executive orders to a ridiculous extreme, and Tattoo imagines a chance encounter between two people on opposite sides of the political spectrum.
Tattoo playwright Susan Sher said she loves creating plays with chance encounters between “people who would otherwise never meet.” The request for submissions of protest plays, she explained, was the perfect opportunity to conceive of two very different characters who come to a kind of mutual understanding.
“Of course, someone can’t completely change in 10 minutes, but at least I can drop the hint that this encounter might get one of the two people to think differently,” Sher said.
Graven said he had been thinking about King Lear as a perfect vehicle to satirize Donald Trump because the main character “has everything and loses it all to vanity.”
Pearlman took it a step farther, by adding snatches of Broadway tunes with topically revised lyrics.
“We threw King Fear together in a couple of weeks. It was so much fun. The words just flew off my fingertips and onto the computer screen. Now the actors are adding imaginative touches of their own. A true collaboration. We can’t wait to offer it up onstage,” Pearlman said.
‘Push Back’ runs for two weekends, April 17-19 and 24-26, at the Mt. Jackson Masonic Lodge, 14040 Church St., Guerneville. The entrance to the theater is around the corner on Third Street. Show times are 7pm Fridays and Saturdays and 2pm on Sundays. The first two Fridays are pay-what-you-will. Saturdays and Sunday matinees are $20.
