Playwright Lewis to world premiere American Storm

By Liam Otten

Kennedy Camelot and corporate arrogance. Small-town values and the faded glories of big-time horse racing. Such are the unlikely juxtapositions presented in American Storm, University playwright Carter Lewis' world-premiere drama that will run March 21-24 in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre in Mallinckrodt Student Center.

Lewis, playwright-in-residence for the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences, has been busy in recent weeks -- in February and March, he has four productions of three plays opening in two cities. In addition to American Storm, his new Men on the Take, a companion to last year's acclaimed Women Who Steal, will be presented at The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis March 20-April 7, while both Men and Women are currently in performance at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, respectively (Feb. 14-March 10).

Photo by David Kilper

Recent alumnus Matt Pickar as Stuck in the upcoming production of American Storm in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre.

"I got pretty lucky, but I'm complaining," Lewis said with a laugh. "Two shows in production and two others in rehearsals --it runs you a little ragged. You don't get to sit back and bask in the wonderful work of the actors as much as you'd like."

American Storm represents something of a departure from Men and Women, both three-person comedies that Lewis likens to the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope road movies.

"I wanted to challenge myself to write something that involved history," he said, "that involved more characters, that involved many stories intertwining."

Set against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the story largely takes place at a fictional Ohio racetrack, where the titular thoroughbred, American Storm, has become an unexpected phenomenon.

"Suddenly the horse is running like crazy, off-the-charts fast," said artist-in-residence Andrea Urice, who directs the 12-person ensemble. "The play follows the community of people surrounding American Storm -- the trainer, the grooms, the track owner, the Cuban jockey -- and how the horse transforms their lives."

American Storm is actually the third "horse-racing play" for Lewis, a self-described "track rat." But where An Asian Jockey in Our Midst and Longevity Abbreviated for Those Who Don't Have Time made use of that distinctive milieu, Storm takes a more hardheaded look at the industry itself.

"Thoroughbred racing really had its heyday in the 1950s," Lewis said. By the start of the 1960s, corporate interests and government oversight had conspired to rob local operations of both autonomy and cash -- an "end of innocence" the playwright sees mirrored in larger political turmoil from the Bay of Pigs to the Kennedy assassination. "That was a period when things shifted so dramatically that our nation was never the same again."

Ironically, though the PAD commissioned American Storm last year and Lewis completed a first draft in August, the mixture of personal and epic scales seems to resonate with particular force in the wake of Sept. 11.

"It's interesting to hear those echoes now," Lewis said, admitting that, on a personal level, "the way one addresses literature seems to have changed."

Which underscores a fundamental point -- that theater, which lives afresh in each new performance, is an inherently unstable medium.

"When you write a play, you're essentially writing a blueprint," Lewis said. "There are things that come to it that you never could have guessed."

Performances begin at 8 p.m. March 21-22; at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. March 23; and at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. March 24. Tickets are $8 for senior citizens and University faculty, staff and students, $12 for the general public. Tickets are available at the Edison Theatre Box Office, at 935-6543, and through all MetroTix outlets. For more information, call 935-5858