January 6 – February 8, 2009
FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR’S NOTEBOOK
“Theatrical” is a word that gets tossed around a lot in this field. Today, doing battle in an arena of seemingly limitless alternative forms of entertainment, theatre strives to be things that those entertainments usually are not: immediate, human, philosophical, and active. Plays that find a vibrant and interesting blend of action, language, character, thought, and human interaction break through to a place of joy and wonderment, regardless of their technological advances and gizmo quota.
For theatre aficionados today, “theatrical” means exploiting the tools that  legitimate live theatre has to offer: its human beings. To be “theatrical” is to use actors to engage, occupy and expand the imaginations of the audience/participants; to create self-colored images from narrative description; to create real excitement under fictitious circumstances, and to evoke real tears or laughter from imaginary predicaments.
Around the World in 80 Days is as theatrical as they come, with a handful of actors creating an incredulous globe-encircling adventure, all on the friendly confines of The Laguna Playhouse stage and in the vast plains of your imaginations. “The stage is all the world,” to reverse and paraphrase Shakespeare. Using Jules Vernes’ original (and most imaginative of tales) as a jumping off point, author Mark Brown and director Michael Butler have brilliantly utilized the conventions of the stage to whisk us from continent to continent without us ever leaving our seats. It is a theatrical journey, indeed.
