A slight apprehension is always in the air before a community drama. Will the acting represent the surrounding bland landscape? Sweet socialist Greenbelt is certainly not a New York City. Will a seemingly normal playwright – not a Rogers or Hammerstein or Shakespeare – be able to construct a play with enough visual, sensual, and thespian intrigue? Will love for the experience or hate for what their parents dragged them into be the reason the actors read their lines?
Surprisingly (to me at least, as this was my first Chris Cherry play,) the play delivered fantastically. Perseus and the Gorgon, written and directed by local playwright Chris Cherry, told the story of “Two kingdoms side by side, each with a royal groom and bride,” as the cast sung in the opening song. Complete with Indian influenced costumes and setting, an unanticipated plot, and catchy tunes, the play provided more than a fun experience for the audience, but for the cast as well.
While the opinion on best-scene was as scattered as data on an unsuccessful Science Fair project, the whole cast could agree that the play and the community that came with it were amazing.
“I liked just the whole cast,” said Abram Shaw, who played Acrisius and is a senior at ERHS. “It’s a really fun experience because everyone is so close-knit and we’re all supporting each other. It’s not competitive at all.”
Walter Commins, another senior at ERHS would not have disagreed with Shaw. Similarly, he said “I love my friends in the play, and despite being a lot of a time commitment, it was a really fun experience for me. All my friends were in it, and its fun.”
ERHS sophomore Sam Goldstein’s favorite part was “being on stage with everybody, and having so many people, and we’re all here doing one thing together, working as a team.”
When asked about what made the play stand out, another 10th grader at ERHS, Kristen Beauchamp, had no hesitation in her response. “It’s written by Chris Cherry. Duh, that’s what makes it stand out.”
The first Saturday show was followed by a late dinner/snack, at the Greenbelt restaurant Silver Diner. The post-show gathering was a tradition of sorts for the actors. I joined them for their celebration, and there, the actors didn’t have to talk about how they were a community and how they have a fun time, as it was shown.
And the kid’s love for the experience and their friends there is not a one-way street. Cherry, who has been interested in Greek mythology since elementary school, said “The cast are my kids,” and he could not identify a favorite part of the process of creating Perseus and the Gordon.
“Oh, man, I’ve loved it from beginning to end,” he said. “We had the chance to do some really in depth rehearsing with the principals. We spent a lot of time sort of analyzing the script, talking about what each character was wanting at that time, the circumstances for those characters, and we were able to do a lot of in depth acting work and I think it really showed in the production.”
Cherry has been interested in Greek mythology ever since he was a kid. When then 3rd –grader Chris Cherry found the D’Aulaires’ book of Greek mythology in his elementary school library, he said that a “colorful world kind of came alive for me.”
This knowledge and love for Greek mythology has resulted in the inspiration for many of his plays. “I’ve turned to Greek myths for the plots, the sort of seed for a lot of my shows, and then I take those sort of basic myths, and change it around to make it a more contemporary story, to give it a happier ending, and to try to ask what it really means to be a hero, and what it means to be beautiful.”
“So I was intrigued by this story from the start,” continued Cherry, “Edith Hamilton calls Perseus and the Gorgon the most fairytale-like of all the Greek myths, and I think that’s true. I think that the story shows that.”
