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About The Clackamas print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1989-2019 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 15, 2000)
4 WcdNEsdAy, N ovemòer 15, 2000 A&E TldE CI ac I< amas P J",e. ^ore^8^er comes to campu The fall play uncovers what rP n . reaiiy happpens when you think nobody is listening MANDY GOOD A&E Editor Think about the things that you say when you are alone or when there is someone around that cannot understand you. Now imagine if someone could understand. Don’t you think that it is kind of scary to think of the things that they might have heard you saying? The Foreigner brings this situation into perspective. The play is set in Betty Meek’s Fish ing Lodge Resort, Tilghman County, Georgia, during the re cent past. There, Charlie Baker (the For eigner), played by John Renner, is put in a situation where he does not want to be talked to because he is very shy. He gets flustered when engaged in conversation and many times finds that he has nothing to say. He does not want to be thought rude, so his dear friend Froggy, played Erin Elizabeth Adkission, who brought him to the lodge as sures him that she will fix ev erything. She will make sure that he will not be talked to and not appear to be rude. The plot then takes a twist : Froggy tells the owner of the lodge, Betty Meeks, played Samantha Tennyson, that Charlie is a foreigner and that while staying at the lodge he is not to be spoken to. The rea soning of course is that he feels bad that he can not un derstand others and to spare the feelings of Charlie it would be easier if nobody talked to him at all. Nice work—Froggy solved the problem, right? Well...maybe not. Since Charlie cannot understand any of them, everyone feels that it’s okay to confide in him or talk about anything when he is in the room. Charlie winds up hear ing more than he should. What 1 found to be the inter esting part of the play was the evolution of Charlie. Renner does an amazing transformation of character. Although Charlie had intended to be isolated while staying at the lodge, the opposite happened. He found that the others were very lonely and that he provided them company and since he could not speak he was also a good listener. “I think that 1 am acquiring a personality...yes it is as if ev ery person hands me a piece of it as they walk in the room,” said Charlie, confiding in Froggy. “We’re making one another complete and alive,” 1 would go to the play again to see the evolution of the char acters. The characters in the play are very developed and it is obvious that there was a lot of time put into the production. SW » öß PHOTOS BY JENNY CHAVEZ / Clackamas Top left: Staff Sgt. "Froggy" LeSueurfErin Elizabeth Adkisson) shows Betty Meeks (Samantha Tennyson) a spoon. Top right: Emily Falkenstein as Catherine Simms. Bottom left: Jeff Miller as Owen Musser. Bottom center: Owen Musser (Jeff Miller) gets ready to pour pop on Charlie Baker (John Renner). Bottom right: John Renner puts on his makeup before the play. Performances of "The Foreigner" are scheduled 8p.n Nov. 16-18 and Nov. 30-Dec. 2nd and at 2:30p.m. J Nov. 19 and Dec 3rd in McLoughlin Hall Theater. A mission is $7 for general, $4 for students, and freei seniors with a reservation. For more information, ci 503-657-6958 ext. 2356. Shadowing hands aid hearing impairs Theater and ASL joint efforts to include the deaf communit CORINNE RUPP Staff Writer The Foreigner, Clackamas’ Theater Department’s fall play, will be experimenting with a new way of sign language in terpreting for the deaf commu nity in the audience. / During the two Friday perfor mances, second year American Sign Language students will be following the actors on stage, “shadowing” individual char acters and signing thé lines as the actors shy them. “We are not going to have them on the side you know, where you have to watch them or the action,”, said Director David Smith-English. “They’re going to be [on stage] with the performers.” This joint project between the Theater and ASL has been in the works since last spring. “We’re trying different things,” said Glenda Edwards, ASL instructor. “This is really an experiment between the the ater department and the sign language class.” Edwards sits on the Board of the Northwest Theater of the Deaf. She approached Smith- English last year about the possibility of collaborating on projects together. Sjmith-En- glish recognized the value of the idea for his actors as well as for the ASL students. Both actors and signers agree that this experiment is challenging. “It’s kind of nerve-wracking, trying to translate all the signs,” said ASL student Andelain Powell. “But once we got that down we were pretty comfortable on stage.” “It’s kind of weird at first,” agreed Jeff Miller, one of the actors. “All the sudden there’s this extra person there.” But despite the challenges of working with so many people on stage and learning new vo cabulary, everyone involved sees the experiment as a suc cess. “When it works right, it sort of makes the character richer,” said Smith-English. This collaboration, hopefully the first of many for the two groups, helps bring two worlds together at Clackamas that might not otherwise meet. I “Most of us feel like wej part of the performance nod said ASL student Powell. Edwards understands the ill portance of the play to h er AS students as a learning tool. “Taking the script ar changing it from English! ASL is really going to he them,” she said. “If you stud any foreign language, yfl know that if you don’t use you lose it.” Besides being educations “it’s pretty fun” said Powell The two shadowed perfol mances of The Foreigner w be Nov. 17 and Dec. 1.
