After last year’s successful end-of-semester production of Almost, Maine, APO once again created a winning entry with this original drama by David Bolus.  A surreal exercise in expressionistic dreamscapes, Blackout presents a group of eleven actors who are to audition for a play no one seems to know anything about.  They are all gathered in the liminal space of an empty stage, all equally in the dark about the nature of the play they are auditioning for.  At different moments, as they talk and argue with each other, there are sudden eruptive blackouts.  Each time the lights return, their numbers have dwindled by one less.  A script is found which contains all the dialogue the auditionees have been speaking, dialogue they all thought was simply their own thoughts and reactions.  As they are frightened by the awareness that they are all behaving and speaking according to this mysterious script, they also realize the script contains information as to who disappears each time the blackouts occur and when.

Further underscoring the nature of the piece is that no one seems to know where the disappeared actors have gone.  Are they back out in the “real’world?  Have the unwanted actors been ‘killed’?  Terror, desperation, anguish vie with ambition and sexual arousal as questions about the nature of the theatre and the nature of existence itself take center stage.

Part Pirandello, part Rod Serling, and part Chorus Line, Bolus’ play overflows with ideas, in-jokes, character revelations, and a broad embrace of the theatre of musicals and of Shakespeare.  There is a sense that the author has bitten off more than can be reasonably chewed or digested, yet his passion, creativity and willingness to try something different is thrilling.  Blackout is also well-served by its actors, especially by Lawson Hangartner, Zacchaeus Kimbrell, Amber Gibson, and Thaddeus Fitzpatrick, and its creative team, most notably the sceneic design of Will Cotton, lighting design by Keegan Butler and directed smoothly by Barrett Guyton.

Originally scheduled for performances on April 27 and 28, it was cancelled due to the April 27^th tornado.  Once power was restored to the Rowand-Johnson Building, the Theatre and Dance Department gave APO the green light for this special performance on Sunday afternoon and the reception by students and faculty, many traumatized by the storm, was well-deserved cheers and bravos for the tenacity and artistry of Blackout’s cast, crew and script.

~sburch

Blackout was produced by the Gamma Gamma Cast of Alpha Psi Omega, Sunday, May 1, 2011 in the Allen Bales Theatre at the University of Alabama.