subUrbia
subUrbia
By Eric Bogosian
Directed by Paul Potenza
Jun. 7 – 23, 2002
Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts
Distinctions
Weekly Planet
- 2002 Top Ten Production
What It's About
The Jobsite Theater is ready to turn up the heat this summer with Eric Bogosian’s Gen-X anthem – subUrbia.
Those familiar with Eric Bogosian’s other plays (Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll, Pounding Nails Into the Floor with my Forehead, Talk Radio) will already know of his incredible ability to capture the pungent nuances of slang and precise verbal textures of a world that seems like a giant invitation to, according to director Paul J. Potenza, “smoke a doob and hang out.”
Potenza (who was cited by the Weekly Planet as a “veritable doctor-of-Bogosian-studies” after his performances of most of Bogosian’s one-man shows) goes on to say that subUrbia is “for anyone who has done their share of ‘hanging out’ with their friends – be it on the corner, behind a bowling alley, on the side of a parkway or the patch of woods behind a schoolyard.”
subUrbia zeroes in on today’s youth, depicting the rudderless yearnings and amorphous rage of a lost generation. It is the story of high school friends, lingering in the northwestern industrial town of Burnfield long after graduation.
Sooze (Katrina Stevenson) yearns to move to the big city and become a performance artist, but her boyfriend Jeff (Chris Holcom) isn’t quite sure that’s a good idea. Jeff’s friends Buff (Mark Trent) and Tim (Ryan McCarthy) seem content to hang out, party and cause trouble with the foreign 7-11 clerks (Dan Khoury and Grace Santos Feeney). Sooze’s friend Bee-Bee (Summer Bohnenkamp) seems to get lost amid the shuffle of suburban life.
Business picks up when high school friend Pony (David Jenkins) returns to Burnfield and the 7-11 with his new personal assistant Erica (Ami Sallee Corley) and a fancy new black limo after he gains fame as a rock star. While some see Burnfield as the suburban ideal of quiet comfort, the suffocating safe world only feeds their frustrations, and a night of drinking and partying careens recklessly toward violence, despair and finally death.
An extraordinary play. Among the best of the season. One of those rare absolute-must-sees. – New York Post
Chekhov high on speed and twinkies. A scathing study of rootless youth. As ferocious as Mr. Bogosian's own one-man shows. – New York Times
subUrbia makes the Angry Young Men of the '50s seem like greeting cards writers. A scarifying dissection of youthful disillusion that manages to be both appalling and appealing. The play's tornado energy and language ring out like a boom box with brains. – Newsweek
Cast & Crew
- Paul J. Potenza – Director
- Dickie Corley – Stage Manager
Cast
- Summer Bohnenkamp – Bee-Bee
- Chris Holcom – Jeff
- David M. Jenkins – Pony
- Dan Khoury – Norman
- Ryan McCarthy – Tim
- Ami Sallee – Erica
- Grace Santos Feeney – Pakeesa
- Katrina Stevenson – Sooze
- Mark Trent – Buff
Crew
- Dickie Corley – Lighting Designer
- Justin Forthuber – Dream Girls Composer
- Catherine Hagner – Assistant Director
- Joe Popp – Summer, Highland Falls Arrangement
- Brian M. Smallheer – Scenic Designer
- Kevin Spooner – Pony’s Guitar Tutor
