The Foreigner
Hale Center Theater OremView digital playbillJan 6, 2024 – Feb 17, 2024
While studying Shakespeare with a mentor of mine named Gary Logan at Shakespeare Theatre Company, we learned that Shakespeare created new words that weren’t previously in the English language, purely to evoke the things he wanted for a particular line or passage. Language that had already existed, wasn’t quite enough to communicate his ideas. Our cast of this show has worked hard to make some fictional contributions to the English language by the playwright Larry Shue, intelligently silly, and to ensure we communicate a story to you about miscommunication. Most of the story is lighthearted and fun, but, there are terrible acts of racism, prejudice and hatred that are portrayed in this story, and we have seen similar acts of evil in the real world. We do not condone the violence or hatred that this play depicts, rather for forty years this show and artists that produce it have been resolutely condemning racism, and that evil will surely be defeated. How? By pretending. We hope that by using the spirit of communication and cooperation, we can defeat the evil in our world the same way that our characters manage to in their world, and that we can make room for people who are different than us in our homes, the community, and our schools; so that everyone will have a chance to be part of our world in their unique and wonderful way. Real life’s awful hard sometimes. But to pretend? Ain’t this nice?