Since I've learned to expect excellence from the theater department at UMKC, I felt little surprise that last night's performance of Slammed!: KC Speaks Out on the Recession was lively, engaging theater acted, designed and directed by some of this town's finest.
What did surprise, however, was the depth of its reporting. Boiling over with local voices, stories and concerns, with tales of layoffs and foreclosures, with updates from Hope House and homeless shelters, with real people's real words explaining what's gone wrong in their -- and our -- world, Slammed! achieves what gutted newsrooms haven't. It's a full portrait of what's happening here now.
Director Stephanie Roberts dispatched her students
into the city to gather stories of the downturn's effect. They found
anger and despair, hope and perseverance, and great heaps of telling,
true-life details. Through Sunday, student actors -- many of them
trained and talented master's candidates -- share those words with us,
often in inspired counterpoint, or in well-staged ensemble passages.
There's even a cogent explanation of how this all happened in the first
place, taken from the mouths of economics professors and local experts,
and then hilariously simplified in a Schoolhouse Rock-style folk song.
We'll have a full review in next week's paper, so for now I'll leave it at this. Slammed! is the best time you can have learning about what's really going on.
(The show is in Studio 116 in the basement of UMKC's Performing Arts
Center at 4949 Cherry. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. tonight ad
Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are at 816-235-6222.)
Photo by Kristi Lewczenko.
Comments (0)