An Enemy of the People

http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20140611/GZ0601/140619786/1419

"The members of the New Brooklyn Theater didn’t come to Charleston to preach. They came to open a dialogue that starts with the chemical spill into the Elk River Jan. 9 and goes…well, it’s hard to say where. It could be about how people are supposed to balance commerce with safety or about who are people supposed to believe: the government, the media, political activists? That dialogue starts tonight when the New Brooklyn Theater Company opens an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People,” a play about the discovery of water contamination in a small community and how different forces react and act on that knowledge.
The plot may sound familiar, which is what brought the New Brooklyn Theater Company to Charleston.
Part of the theater company's mission is to “stage theatre wherever theatre is uniquely needed to move forward public conversations.” It seemed to them that a conversation needed to be had in and with Charleston.

“In political discussion, the tendency is to simplify,” New Brooklyn Theater Company co-founder Jeff Strabone said. “We do the opposite. We have a very high estimate of people’s intelligence. We talk up.”
They were only supposed to have a limited run, but Strabone said the hospital asked them to keep going.

...Strabone adapted the story and updated it.....

“I changed some things here and there, but I think it speaks to what the people of West Virginia have seen,” he said. “The play follows the plot.

...Solari said, “We picked people's brains and even spoke, early on, to the DEP.”

...Freedom Industries, the company responsible for the chemical spill, he added, had no interest in talking to them.

... This summer, state government is scheduled to draft new regulations for chemical storage along the river.

“We wanted to provide a forum for citizens to speak openly about the situation at a time when decisions are being made,” he said. It also had to be held outside and on the river.“I just couldn't see having it indoors,” Strabone said. “It needed to be near the river.”

The play, they explained, is still sort of a work in progress. Each performance will feature a talk-back segment between the audience, the cast and invited guests. What happens after the play is over, they say, is in the hands of the people."