“dramaanddemocracy,” a musical written by Wesely Savick and performed by Suffolk’s theater department from Oct. 24 to Oct. 27, explores the difficult terrain of American politics.
With Savick’s story, the audience is given two different plot lines to follow throughout the show. The story is split between Athens, Greece and Athens, Ohio as the story flips between the two locations. Above all, it seems the main conflict follows two residents from Athens, Ohio as the two come to find out that they stand on opposite sides of politics.
The story introduces the audience to a Greek chorus that follows the conflicts of Betty and Bill as told by Cassandra. It discusses the difficult terrain of politics and how it can divide people when it becomes too focused on controversy.
The show digs slightly into important moments in American politics such as the 2016 election and the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. The audience gets to see how these moments separate the main characters from one another, and how dividing it can be when it comes to both drama and democracy.
While the show has a basic understanding of the difficulty behind politics, especially in today’s world, it barely scratches the surface of the complexity behind politics. It takes a very surface-level view of the rivalry between the two parties, giving the audience a simple view of American politics.
The show also had a strange tempo where it felt very fast-paced and quickly moved to being very slow. It was very karting which made it hard to follow along sometimes, but it also complimented how jarring American politics can really be.
The songs within the show tie well into the messages they are looking to portray and the characters they have on stage. All of the actors were able to perform their songs beautifully, each song perfectly fitting to the actor singing it.
The actors do very well with the material they are given, with several standout performances from the actors. Overall, the performances seen on stage brought the audience into the show. The over-dramatic nature of the more exuberant characters made the show very fun while the more somber characters really sold the viewers into the seriousness of the topics discussed in the show.
On top of that, the audience interactions made the show even more personal, as America itself is at the dawn of a new election year. It reminds the audience that they are a part of this system and how important it is to take advantage of the opportunity to have your voice heard.
Savick, the director of Suffolk’s version of the show, got the inspiration for the ever-relevant play in 2016, the day that America received the results of the presidential election that would change the course of American politics as we knew it.
“It’s hard to really underscore how obvious it was that Hilary was going to win,” Savick said. “The thing that was so important for the Suffolk part of this is the next day when I came back to school, my students, especially I think in the theater department, because we have a lot of LGBTQ students and students who felt endangered because of their race, gender identification, or sexuality, they felt like they were in danger with this new thing and they didn’t know what to do,” Savick explained.
Savick decided to channel these observations and feelings into writing, a creative outlet that allows for commentary through storytelling.
“The theater has always been one thing that you can really use to protest, so I thought well, I really need to write something that involves our students, that makes them feel like they can push back, so the impulse for all of it came from that,” Savick said.
The original production of the show took place in 2018, in the midst of former President Trump’s presidency, and as we all know, the 2024 election is less than two weeks away. This musical is just as relevant to the political climate today, as it was back when it was conceived.
“Now, really a full year ago, when I was thinking about ‘oh my gosh, look at what’s going to happen in 2024,’ so what are we going to do in the theater department, how are we going to address it,” Savick said.
In the original 2018 production, one of the plot points of the show was that the country was going to file for divorce from itself, personifying the extreme division and hatred that the 2016 election caused in America.
“It was a whole part of the play that I thought, oh my god, all that now in 2024 has basically come true,” Savick said.
The Suffolk theater department’s version of the play differs a bit from the original 2018 production.
“One of the things that really scared me, that song, ‘Put Them in a Sentimental Mood’, was in the first show, and COVID had not yet happened, so when I was revisiting the show and I thought, oh my god, that song is about the pandemic now, you would think that something as tragic and miserable as that would help us all regain some perspective, and it didn’t,” Savick explained.
While Athena is singing this song in the play, news footage from the pandemic was playing on screens on the stage, truly putting the audience in a sentimental mood. It was a solemn reminder of those trying times, and a reminder of how no matter the side you were on, everyone was affected in some way.
“I hated that time, I think everyone did, it was so frightening and uncertain, and I was so hoping that we could finally get together as a country, and we never did, and now, look at where we are,” Savick said. “I thought that this musical was a good way to talk about it because it doesn’t talk about him, it talks about us, about human beings.”
The cast of Suffolk’s performance of the play had the help of the original cast for this production.
“Amanda LaCoco was in the class of 2019 at Suffolk, and when she was in undergrad she did some of the choreography, and she did such a good job I thought oh it’s very important to keep the Suffolk family and connections, I thought it would be so great for students now to meet someone who was in the first show,” Savick said.
Drama and Democracy was Jack Feinberg’s first production with the theater department.
“Working with Amanda was extremely fun, she’s very talented, her teaching techniques are very simple and easy to learn, so it was a really good process to learn the dances and all the choreography for the show,” Feinberg said.
In addition to the original choreographer helping with the production, the actress for Betty in Suffolk’s production, AJ Aversano, received help with guitar lessons from the actress who played Betty in the original cast. Justin Lahue, who graduated from Suffolk in 2022, also helped with the performance, putting together the video clips of the 2016 election news coverage and the pandemic news coverage.
“We like to keep the Suffolk people close, it’s great to see the different generations meeting each other, it makes you feel like you’re a part of a bigger family,” Savick explained.
This play’s message really made the audience think about the state of our country right now, and the upcoming election, which is exactly what Savick intended.
“The theater has a place in responding to the world and to injustice, and if we don’t take advantage of that we’re squandering something that’s very important,” Savick said.
