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The Great Pandemic | Highlands-Cashiers Players
Written By: Marlene Osteen | Issue: 2021/10 – October
Highlands-Cashiers Players offers The Great Pandemic at Highlands Performing Arts Center October 14-17 and October 21-24, Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 PM and Sunday at 2:30 PM. For more information, visit highlandsperformingarts.com and click on the HCP link.
Rehearsing for The Great Pandemic in September
In The Great Pandemic, local playwright Craig Eister looks back at the emotional aftermath of the Pandemic and tries to make sense of the year’s events. Eister’s script is an impressive accomplishment – a parody, a tribute, and a reckoning, all in one.
Eister sets up the premise at the beginning of the first act. The Board of Directors of a local drama club is meeting following 2020, trying to decide on their next play. Discussion ensues – one member argues for a musical, another for a mystery, and a third for a love story. Trying to persuade the others of the superiority of their vision, they each act out a skit. What emerges is a play within a play. By the end of the first act, the group realizes they will produce more compelling entertainment if they combine their ideas into a single story.
The second act intertwines the play’s three themes – a noir crime story that embraces a love tale and breaks into song. There is an overlapping of plots in the miniseries of actions that follow. The actors are locked into a building when someone is murdered, and as they struggle to figure out who did it, the audience looks on as two of the characters fall in love.
The script is filled with the pointed details of life during the Pandemic – zoom calls, sanitizing, and masks – and many scenes are anchored to local places. Yet, it also emphasizes the more consequential fallout of the period – racial tensions and job loss. Running throughout is Eister’s message of diversity – that all lives matter and that, “At the end of the day I want everyone to leave the theater thinking that everyone is an individual and you create a better world when everyone works together.”
Eister juggles all these themes with humor and wraps them inside what is essentially a comedy. “I want people to leave feeling like they have laughed, to feel uplifted after a challenging year, that it is possible to go out once again and have a good time.”
The music was co-written by Eister and musician/music minister Les Scott. Eight performances of the original play, The Great Pandemic, are scheduled four each week: October 14-17 and October 21-24, Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 PM and Sunday at 2:30 PM. Guests will be seated bistro style, and beverages will be available for purchase. All tickets are $30 plus tax and fees. For more information, visit: highlandsperformingarts.com and click on the HCP link.
by Marlene Osteen
