OU alumnus Jason Half’s new play Sundial looks at the relationship and responsibilities between a coal company and an Appalachian community. A staged reading will be Thursday in the Hahne Theater.
Environmental issues in the Appalachian region are a hot topic, particularly when it comes to coal.
Jason Half, a 2011 Ohio University alumnus, is bringing these issues to the arts world with Sundial. A staged reading of the play will be held Thursday in the Hahne Theater in Kantner Hall.
The drama is based on the events at Marsh Fork Elementary in Naoma, West Virginia, where a coal company’s mountaintop removal process affected the adjacent school.
Half, a Marietta resident, said some characters are made of composites of people involved, but are mainly fictional. The play’s title refers to Naoma’s nickname.
“What attracted me to this story was the question of how people and how the community react or work with a company that’s both benefitting them, with something like employment, and in some ways hurting them or causing danger,” Half said.
He added he strived to portray the complexity of the story and situation, sparking discussion instead of painting the conflict as black-and-white.
“It’s easy to make the coal companies the villain and make it melodramatic,” he said. “I tried not to do that, to represent both sides and to inspire a conversation rather than just say one side is good and one side is bad.”
Half began writing the play during his final year in the graduate playwriting program at OU. He received a grant, the Anthony Trisolini Award, to begin research on the material.
Ryan Holihan, a third-year graduate director, is directing the staged reading. Holihan compared a staged reading to a radio play because there is minimal staging and no props.
“The script is the most important thing when doing a staged reading,” he said. “It’s for the words to be read out loud and for the audience to get the larger picture of what it is about.”
The staged reading is sponsored by the southern Ohio regional chapter of the Dramatists Guild, the only professional guild in the nation for stage writers. It is part of the new initiative called First Thursdays Reading Series, which was originated by Jennifer Schlueter, a regional representative of the Dramatists Guild and an assistant professor of theater at The Ohio State University.
Half is a member of DG and chose to have his reading in Athens.
“I’m really excited about getting a real outlet for member playwrights’ work to be heard here in Ohio,” Schlueter said. “The biggest problem we’re facing is having to submit work to theaters that don’t know you or see you. (With the series) you show your work in front of friendly faces in your own region.”
Schlueter will lead a post-show conversation, which she said is not only worthwhile for the playwright but also for the audience.
“The audience gets a chance to really invest in new work,” she said. “There’s nothing more important in theater today than for an audience to respond to and get committed to their own local theater-makers.
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