A young man moves from his native Croatia in 1910 seeking a better life and becomes a union organizer in 1940s Wyoming. After he urges his daughter to leave Rock Springs to attend college in California, she becomes a corporate organizer in 1980s Japan, where her son learns his own way of leaving. Clarvoe’s play moves back and forth through the decades, exploring how each generation leaves their family in
Archives for October 2014
REVIEW: Ambition Facing West
We are a nation in motion. Approximately 12% of Americans change addresses annually. If you ask how many moved to a new location in the last five years, the number jumps to 35%. There may be millions of reasons why so many people move, but it’s not hard to identify the major one: opportunity. If we know that opportunity is the primary incentive to move, we also know something
Announcing BETC’s Generations Winner: ‘Burning Cities’ by Simon Fill
The Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company (BETC) is proud to announce the winner of our 2014 Generations new play competition: “Burning Cities”, by Simon Fill. Generations is a residency program, made possible by the Sustainable Arts Foundation, supporting playwrights who are parents of children under 18 years of age. Each year, BETC accepts submissions of full-length, unproduced plays. This year, the company received 95 entries from playwrights around the U.S., and as
The young, the restless, the rooted in “Ambition Facing West”
In the 1990s, the drama “Ambition Facing West,” and the comedy “Over the River and Through the Woods” had East Coast premieres within a year of each other. Each tussles with the familial repercussions of immigration. The former with glimmers of wry observation. The latter with fairly familiar gags that give way to tender wisdom. * * * ½ Drama Joe DiPietro’s “Over the River” is midway through an affable production by
REVIEW: Ambition Facing West
The compulsion to leave one’s home for another land is driven by many factors—persecution, war, famine, economics, and wanderlust, just to name a few—and many have made the journey. Such migrations have always been an essential element in human history. To capture the essence of the motivations and emotions, of those so driven, in a piece of theatre is rare indeed; yet, in Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company’s current production