War and absurdism go hand in hand at Jackson High School's DramaFest

For its spring theater offering, the Jackson High School Thespians have chosen art over entertainment (even though this art can be entertaining), tears over laughs and nonsense over logic.

This weekend the Thespians will present two pieces of theater that don't shy away from the artistic side of theater, or art's ability to convey an important message. The first is a readers theater called "The Radiance of a Thousand Suns: The Hiroshima Project," by Annie V. McGravie, Dwight Okita, Nicholas A. Patricca and David Zak -- a presentation which took third place in its category at the regional high school theater competition.

"The Hiroshima Project" cuts right to the heart of the brutality of war and the horrendous destruction man brought to life with the creation of the atomic bomb. The readers theater starts out with a chorus that sounds like a militaristic chant, quoting an ancient Hindu text stating "I've become death, the destroyer of worlds."

Using the international correspondence be? tween a Scottish teen, Maggie (played by Bethany Parry), and her Japanese friend Yumi (played by Whitney Tankersley), "The Hiroshima Project" details the events that led up to the creation and unleashing of "Little Boy" on Hiroshima. The story is extremely moving, as these two girls wonder why war even exists, and why it has to separate them in such a way (family members encourage them not to write to each other).

When one of the Manhattan Project's physicists (played by Donovan Tousignant) wonders what happens to people when an atomic bomb explodes, his revelation of his role in warfare's most destructive single episode prompts us all to wonder why it is people mass-kill each other at all. Given the current state of the world, and our current conflict, the questions brought about by "The Hiroshima Project" are even more important.

What follows the readers theater is far different -- a one-act play that took first at regionals and will be performed in state competition. In Eugene Ionesco's "The Bald Soprano," the name has as little to do with the plot as the one-act has to do with the readers theater that preceded it -- at least on the surface. But as director Bob Clubbs notes in the program, the events outlined in "The Hiroshima Project" are directly responsible for plays like "The Bald Soprano" -- theater of the absurd.

"This unusual style of theater sometimes expresses a view that life in meaningless, superficial and empty," Clubbs writes. "The trauma of war and its deadly technology led some playwrights, such as Ionesco, to attack conventional theater."

By its illogical nature, "The Bald Soprano" makes description almost impossible. Imagine surrealism and Groucho Marx mixed together, and you're getting close.

The cast's ensemble actors -- Grace Blades, Bobby King, Travis Bell, Lindsay Spencer, Bethany Elfrink and Clint Pogue -- are superb at playing characters who seem to take themselves seriously while spouting complete gibberish. Nothing makes sense in the world of "The Bald Soprano" -- not words, not relationships, not logic, not even time (the clock in the sparse sitting room spasms uncontrollably).

Even though you can't make sense of anything, you find yourself laughing at the utter illogic and absurdity. And the plot has nothing to do with a bald soprano. In fact, it has nothing to do with anything.

Be warned: if "artsy" theater is anathema to you, Jackson's DramaFest will disappoint. But if you want to see performances outside the norm for high school theater, and good ones at that, then DramaFest is for you.

msanders@semissourian.com

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