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

When is a meditation really an illustration? Though I don’t believe playwright Anthony Clarvoe or the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company (BETC) set out to answer, or necessarily even pose, that question with Ambition Facing West, BETC’s production of this award-winning play presents itself as a meditation on the nature of family but is truly more of an expertly crafted illustration of one family’s evolution. Clarvoe’s own family immigrated from Croatia, and

  My friend Geoffrey Stern, who taught international relations at the London School of Economics, used to try and tease out of his students a definition of the word “nation.” Was a nation simply its physical boundaries? A group of people living under a specific government, or with a common language or religion? For every argument his students put forth, he’d find a contradiction. Finally, he’d explain that the nation