Metropolitan Playhouse
Virtual Playhouse
Presents
A Live Stream Zoom Video
of

THE PEOPLE
Written by SUSAN GLASPELL

Directed by ALEX ROE
Music by MICHAEL KOSCH
Background Paintings by DANNY LICUL

Talkback with CHERYL BLACK, Professor of Theatre History, Dramaturgy, & Acting, University of Missouri

Featuring
CRAIG ANTHONY BANNISTER, ADAM BRADLEY, QUINLAN CORBETT, ERINN HOLMES, TERESA KELSEY, JON LONOFF, TOD MASON, BEETHOVAN ODEN, MADELYNN POULSON, JACK SOCHET, DIANE TYLER, & TERRELL WHEELER

www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/virtualplayhouse

July 18, 2020, 8 p.m.

Metropolitan Playhouse has upped its online game with this production. Twelve actors, almost as many painted backgrounds, and seamless interaction. The usual great acting and script selection, of course. It continues to amaze that one-act plays from 1917 can be so timely in 2020.

“The People” is a small radical journal that is slowly going out of business. Ed, the owner, is out of town trying to secure funding. Oscar, the young, full-of-himself, writer/poet/associate editor, waxes philosophical about it all. Enter the Woman from Idaho. She has come all this way to see the office because she is so enamored of the publication.

A parade of characters voice their opinions while awaiting Ed’s return. Tom the printer, simply worried about loss of income. Sara, the earnest optimist writer. The Artist, who insists that the problem is too many words, not enough pictures. And so it goes, with characters named The Earnest Approach, The Light Touch, The Firebrand, and The Philosopher. Still the Woman from Idaho waits. She is joined by The Boy from Georgia and The Man from the Cape. They express opinions that slice every facet of the publication until its gem-like value is obvious. Ed makes his decision.

Here in 2020, printed publications are losing business every day. In 1917 we were facing World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic. Sound familiar? A world full of stress and contention and violently opposing arguments pro and con. THE PRESS has a message: Listen to each other, think, then decide. The world of 2020 needs to try that.

-Karen D’Onofrio-