Arts and Letters play lives up to GCSU’s taste

A politically charged play was performed in the Arts and Letters festival March 12. “A Question of Taste” was written by Dr. Andrew Ade, a professor of English at Westminster College in Pennsylvania.

The play is, in Ade’s own words, a “fable about the political chaos is many underdeveloped countries.”

It is a one-act play that does not take place in Africa, but echoes the political atmosphere there. The main characters are freedom fighters from different generations and it is about their conflicts regarding political oppression.

The play was inspired by Ade’s job as a teacher in Zaire many years ago, he said.

“I lived and worked as a high school teacher in the interior of Zaire during the heyday of the notorious kleptocrat Mubutu Sese Seko, who exploited the nation,” Ade said.

Ade’s play was the prizewinner in GCSU’s National Journal of Contemporary Culture’s contest. He said he was excited to see how the GCSU theater department portrayed it.

Since the play was short, the cast and crew were small but close-knit. Freshman theater major Sarah Prochaska was the sound designer for the play.

According to Prochaska, working on the play was a learning experience.

“Most of the sounds ended up becoming a distraction for the show, such as the vault door opening a million times during “A Question of Taste,” Prochaska said.

Both Prochaska and the costume designer Caila Blanton had just two weeks to pull the production off.

“We had an incredibly fast rehearsal process, so everything had to come together rather fast,” Prochaska said.

Professor David Muschell coordinated the contest by choosing the judge. He said he thought the product turned out very well.

“We had non-theater majors playing the three main parts — two pre-meds and one sociology major,” Muschell said.

The Arts and Letters Contest is held every year and submissions from all types of creative writing are accepted. Writers from all over the world compete and the judges are professionals in the creative writing field. Ade won $1,000 for being chosen and he was flown out to see the play.

Posted by Danielle Paluga on Apr 1 2010. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry