The Living Blog: new play at FGCU

Poster from The Living Blog.

"The Living Blog," a new play written, designed, and directed by Barry Cavin, Chairman of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Florida Gulf Coast University, is on stage at the Theatre Lab on the campus of FGCU. The play runs Wednesday, Feb. 20 through Saturday, Feb. 23 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Feb. 24 at 2 p.m.

During the Depression, Congress established the Federal Theatre Project as a means to employ thousands of out-of -work theatre professionals. The most memorable series of works to come out of the FTP was The Living Newspaper. The Living Newspaper was an amalgam of newspaper stories, political speeches, and official documents. The power of theatre breathed life into sterile accounts of society ravaged by poverty, war, and social injustice. The social conditions became so vivid in performance Congress withdrew its funding of the project after only four years due to complaints that the work was linked to Communism.

FGCU's experimental production puts a contemporary spin on the idea of performing news accounts by appropriating the current equivalent of the vital press…the blog. This multi-media, multi-layered performance will take its material from a blogosphere created by the author and other contributors throughout cyberspace. The result will be a five-act play (Scandal, Election, War, Environment, and Apocalypse) with each act corresponding to a blog. So the production will take place as much on the internet as on the stage. Even after 70 years, some of the same ills still threaten our society and new threats loom on the horizon. The Living Blog promises to be as current, responsive, and controversial as The Living Newspaper was in the 1930s.

Barry Cavin

Tickets are $10, FGCU Students, faculty and staff $5 with a valid ID.

For information visit www.fgcu.edu/CAS/ TheatreLab or call 590-7268.