This Flat Earth
With my birthday coming up this week I decided to splurge and treat myself to a night of theatre. I decided to see This Flat Earth at Playwright's Horizons, a show I've been wanting to see for weeks now. I love the work being produced at playwrights, especially because a lot of their season is written by New Dramatists. I really wanted to see Dance Nation by Clare Barron but since it's in their smaller space they sold out way before I could get a ticket.
This Flat Earth did not disappoint in anyway. It's the first straight play/non-musical that I've seen (outside of a workshop setting) since I've moved here! Truly shocking to me especially considering how much I prefer plays to musicals. The show was a moving tribute to the trying times we are living in and the difficulties that are unique to the youth as they face these challenges. The show follows the story of a young girl, her best friend, her family and the woman in the apartment upstairs following a mass shooting at their middle school. In a "post-parkland" world it's easy to pigeon hole the piece as a political statement on gun control, but that would be doing this play a disservice. This play is about growing up, realizing adults do not have all the answers and learning to question the things we have accepted as the norm.
As someone who loves a political play more than the next person it was exciting to see a play that did not necessarily push a single political agenda. In these incredibly dichotomized times it was truly refreshing to see a piece that gives us space to analyze our current moment as individuals. The action of the play centers around gun violence but so many other things are integral to the narrative. The idea that certain people do not "belong" just because of where they come from changes the direction of the show, the lack of funding for arts in our schools and the capitalist desire to "keep up with the Jones' " are all tenants of our culture that come under fire over the course of the show. As Julie, the 13 year old protagonist, so accurately states: "back in Columbus' day everyone thought the world was flat. It makes me think, what do we accept that will seem ridiculous in a few hundred years?"