The Tartan Online: “Commie reefer queens want your kids.”
Statements like this, painted on the set and often voiced by actors, were the driving satire behind Scotch’n’Soda’s first production of the school year, Reefer Madness, which played last Thursday through Saturday in McConomy Auditorium.
4 comments:
As the dramaturge for this show I was fairly close to it and know quite a lot about it. The amount of error in this article is astounding. The author clearly read my little historical blurb from the program and extrapolated like crazy on that. They think that the people making the show misunderstood the effects of marijuana. The people making the movie actually knew what they were doing was stupid but it was a political thing. The government wanted people to stop buying hemp paper because the man who had quite a monopoly on a different kind of paper was a good donor for the government and ran and funded almost of all of the marijuana propaganda in an attempt to stop people from buying hemp paper. Although at least they spent more then 1 minute on this article, this is the first time the Tartan has actually reviewed a Scotch and Soda show instead of just summarizing it. So although ripe with inaccuracy at least they are moving in the right direction
The propaganda film this show is based on is an old favorite of mine. It is so absurdly incorrect and preposterous that it's funny. You can clearly tell whole watching the first that the people who had the film made were convinced marijuana had all these wild and crazy traumatizing effects and had no real idea the properties of the drug. I'm very disappointed I was unable to see this production because I would have loved to compare the film and the play.
Although perhaps no Les Miserables, Reefer Madness did have some high points and performances, and the author of the article recognized that. The author also states that this was a good halloween weekend show, which it was. I think the date planning gives high credit to Scotch'n'Soda. Perhaps this show would not have been seen by quite as many people had it not been for the weekend and an 11 PM showtime. Many viewers may have been going through some reefer madness themselves, and to suggest that there were not a number of drunk audience members at a number of the showings is a joke. But given the time and environment the show created, this was ideal for a college campus. S'n'S recognized that, the author of the article recognized that, and students recognized that and went. The show was fine as a show, but given the number of members on the team who were encouraging the behavior, I think S'nS really found the right time and date for this piece.
I agree with MDC. When I first heard about the show I had no intention of seeing it. But once I realized the alignment of the date and the show - it all made sense. The move was a creative solution to put butts in seats for the their organization and try to make some money. Imagine if the whole world worked like that. Maybe theatrical organizations would be making more money and not so upset. Too many times the theatre cries for more support of the unique art approaches opposed to seeking out solutions to fund their own risks themselves.
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