Arts & Culture

SPSCC’s virtual show of one-act plays tackles timely issues through social satire

By Molly Gilmore Contributing writer

“Call It Out,” South Puget Sound Community College’s first virtual theater production, is “theater that impacts rather than distracts,” as theater professor Lauren Love puts it.

The evening of one-act social satires plus short solo pieces, streaming this weekend on YouTube, offers a sharp look at timely issues.

“Satire — and these satirical plays in particular — takes on pressing concerns by exposing them,” Love told The Olympian. “Satire is not the comedy of distraction; rather, it can draw productively uncomfortable laughter.”

Though it was filmed on Zoom, the show won’t involve the now-familiar “Brady Bunch”-style boxes.

The actors performed in front of green screens, and technical director Adam Michard and students used Open Broadcaster Software to combine footage, reposition actors and add scenery and sound cues.

The trio of plays offers diverse perspectives on American culture and racial attitudes and are directed by a diverse set of directors, all women. And all involve media images, making them a natural fit for a virtual production.

Love directed Joyce Carol Oates’ “Tone Clusters,” a dark and disturbing play that begins with a seemingly ordinary suburban couple being interviewed in a TV studio.

The play “requires those of us who benefit from the dominance of white culture to take a long hard look at ourselves,” Love said.

Ana Maria Campoy, a Seattle actor, director and teaching artist, directs Luis Valdez’s 1967 “Los Vendidos” (“The Sellouts”), set at a fictional business called Honest Sancho’s Used Mexican Lot. Each of the “models” for sale exemplifies a different stereotype.

“ ‘Los Vendidos’ is an absurdist comedy,” Campoy told The Olympian. “Some of the jokes do remind us of how much our language and attitudes towards these identities and inequalities have changed, but the issues and their root causes have not.

“There are moments that it’s a gut punch when you realize this play — written before I and most of the cast were even born — is still so relevant,” she added.

Lydia Valentine of Tacoma, a poet and playwright and educator, directed Amiri Baraka’s 2005 “Jackpot Melting: A Commercial,” which involves two versions of its characters — one the real people and the other the strangely idealized TV versions.

“Baraka illustrates the fallacy of the American dream and the melting pot of America,” Valentine told The Olympian.

Baraka’s work is often overlooked, she said. “I feel that this has to do with his passion for Black nationalism and anti-capitalism, two of the themes that are woven into most of his writing, including ‘Jackpot Melting.’ ”

Love, who last month directed Harlequin Productions’ “This Flat Earth,” said that though she’s missing the in-person community that’s a core of theater, she’s been pleasantly surprised by the power of theater made for a virtual audience.

“What is at the heart of theater is communicating our stories and playing together,” she said in a video on the college’s website. “We can play together virtually.”

Call It Out: A Stream of Social Satire

This story was originally published November 19, 2020 at 5:45 AM.

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