Salvation Road‘s run at the Steinhardt School of New York University ended abruptly with the arrival of Hurricane Sandy on Oct. 29. Compared to the loss of life, injury, damage to property, chaos and disruption visited upon the good people of Manhattan–one friend I know of is still without heat two weeks later–curtailing the run of a play on a college campus is really no loss at all.  Disappointed as I am not to have a full run, I feel worse for the students who worked so hard to bring the play to life; they threw themselves into the project with such enthusiasm, I know they must have been deeply disappointed that they could not restage the play at a later time. But alas, the Pless Black Box was booked with the next show coming in, and there was simply no space to perform.

 

For me, the play moves on now to another production, this time at Walden Theatre in Louisville, Ky., where a cast of younger actors tackles the story of two guys in search of a girl who does not want to be separated from her guru. The production is Walden’s entry into Louisville’s Slant Culture Theatre Festival, described as “a laboratory for uncommon works” and hosted by Walden. Salvation Road will run in rep with The Debate Over Courtney O’Connell by Mat Smart, produced by Theatre [502] of Louisville; The Man With the Flower in His Mouth, by Luigi Pirandello, produced by Savage Rose Classical Theatre Company, and 5 Things, a devised piece by Le Petomane Theatre Ensemble, among other works.

 

Like NYU, the Walden Theatre is producing a large-cast version of the play. But this time, instead of college students playing high school age characters, the actors are area high school students who study in Walden’s conservatory program. This is a terrific opportunity for me to see how the play works as a youth theatre piece—and how well it is received by audiences of that age.

 

When I first wrote the play, I thought the biggest barrier to production by schools would be the subject matter–religion. But I was advised by a  high school drama teacher that cast size, more than subject matter, would be the bigger concern. Thus, I expanded what I had intended as a five-actor piece to a 90-minute play for 12 to 16 performers. However, the five-actor — actually now a six-actor — version still lives. During a workshop at NYU in the spring, I worked on that smaller cast version–simultaneously developing it with the 16-actor play, though we ultimately presented the six-actor version in public staged readings in June.

 

The differences? The larger piece creates a stronger sense of place; the atmosphere is richer. But the smaller cast play, requiring the cast to double into nine speaking parts, is a spare, stark telling of the story that for me, draws the focus more sharply. These are two different experiences of the story, and for schools that are interested in the issues raised by the play, involving more students in the telling makes a great deal of sense. But I still believe Salvation Road can find an audience in mainstream theatres and for that reason, I look forward to the production of the small cast version at Seton Hill University in April.