Tuesday, August 24, 2010
theater T-Square engineers on-stage train chase with 'Stealing Dixie'
Posted by Curt Holman @Curt_Holman on Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 1:35 PM
- Theatre in the Square
- MYSTERY TRAIN: Top row (L-R) Corey Bradberry, Zechariah Pierce, Scott E. DePoy Bottom Row: (L-R) Rob Lawhon and Bryant Smith
On Aug. 29 at 4:30 p.m., the company will explore Stealing Dixie's relationship between history and creative license with a free panel discussion:
Panelists will include Playwright, Phillip DePoy; Lead Interpreter at The Southern Museum, Harper Harris; CEO/Founder of the Marietta Museum of History, Dan Cox; and President of Georgia Battlefields Association, Charlie Crawford. Moderator for the panel will be Stealing Dixie director and Theatre in the Square Assistant Artistic Director, Jessica Phelps West.
Full disclosure: I'm friends with Phillip DePoy, but I think I can note some of the show's creative solutions to the challenge of dramatizing a choo-choo chase, without a conflict of interest.
Structurally, Stealing Dixie emphasizes the build-up to the train theft and its aftermath. Act One depicts the night before the theft as a small group of incognito Union soldiers and spies rehearse (at times literally) their plan to steal the Confederate train engine The General, sabotage the track and telegraph line and cripple the Confederacy's supply lines. The characters hash out details, suspiciously probe each other's motivations and flash back to experiences that inform their daring plot. The second act takes place months later, with the Atlanta-based sentencing hearing for the captured conspirators, which reviews the events of the actual theft and where it went wrong.
Stealing Dixie could easily have confined itself to those two locations - other plays and even movies have left more to the imagination. (Reservoir Dogs, for instance, presents the preparation and fallout from a jewel heist, but not the actual heist itself.) Stealing Dixie, however, presents scenes from the actual chase — some imaginary, some as "real" memories. Dale Brubaker's set partly includes, in the background a flat, wooden, full-sized replica of the General engine, which features wheels that turn and a smokestack that puffs during the action scenes. Meanwhile, the actors stand on a wheeled platform that partly resembles a railway handcart, and partly a covered wagon without the cover. During the chase scenes, they rock, jostle and call to each other as if in motion, with the lighting and sound design effectively evoking the action.
The sequences tend to be relatively brief but work remarkably well, particularly in the second act when Confederate engineer William Allen Fuller acts out his dogged pursuit of "his" stolen engine, a feat that clearly inspired Buster Keaton's character in his silent movie classic The General. Stealing Dixie accomplishes the play's most outlandish challenge, with nary a pair of rollerstakes in sight.
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