The Great Divide
The Shotgun Players of Berkeley
are presently performing THE GREAT DIVIDE. Brilliantly directed
by Mina Morita, the play uses Ibsen’s AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE
as a template. Adam Chanzit has moved the setting from a Norwegian
town just downstream from the fetid mill town of Molletal, to
a sintered town in Colorado which has the fortune, or misfortune,
to be perched on top of a flatulent vein of Marcellus shale. Although
the geography or geology may be a little off, Chanzit has correctly
depicted the dubious benefits of extracting natural gas from shale
via fracturing. As human nature would have it, the indigent townspeople
of this Colorado hamlet are slavering over the possibility of
real jobs, royalty checks, cheap energy, bigger houses, glitzier
cars, better cuts of meat and cable service with 500 channels.
A decent shot at the American Dream has everyone poised for moral
compromise, spring loaded to the environment be damned position
and willing to sacrifice the common good for the sake of the common
good. While the local economy has never been so robust, it is
a pity the same cannot be said for its withering denizens; the
townspeople and, more sadly, the innocent goats are stricken by
all the ancillary side effects of drinking shots of benzene with
their well water. Hovstad, an earnest whelp of a journalist (duplicitously
played Ryan Tasker) is taking notes for his Pulitzer Prize entry,
while Doctor Katherine Stockmann is taking water samples and offering
bottled water and evacuation as an antidote to the malaise. Just
as the town is beginning to smell the benzene tainted lucre, Doctor
Stockmann (played righteously by Heather Robison) succeeds in
temporarily driving off the drilling and fracking company; the
people are not happy, you can almost hear their plaintive yelps,
“Shane, Come Back” to the spoilers. Needless to say,
Doctor Stockman does not become a viable candidate for the town
council or mayor, nor is she elected to the state assembly; if
the town had a Shirley Jackson style Lottery Doctor Stockman would
have won it hands down. The Shotgun Players are the obvious choice
to spot light this timely issue of environment and ground water
versus cheap energy prices and avarice; the Shotgun Players occupy
the moral high ground; they are possibly the greenest and most
environmentally friendly theater in the country; their photovoltaic
array not only powers their Klieg Lights, it produces a surplus
of electrons that are force fed to PG & E. Sure this is an
election year, but if you are thinking of political or social
activism, you might want to witness what happens to the Stockmann
family when Citizen Katherine sticks her head into the powder
keg. THE GREAT DIVIDE will not only entertain you, it will challenge
you intellectually and might even get you to trade the 12 mpg
SUV for a bicycle and swap those archaic incandescent bulbs in
for LEDs. As Pogo once said, “We have met the enemy and
he is us.” Don’t miss THE GREAT DIVIDE
