Southern Theatre presents: Gas
7:30 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday, Oct. 14-18, 2008
Bud Walton Theatre
Admission: free to students, faculty, staff; $3 for adults; $1 for senior citizens and high school students

By Georg Kaiser
Directed by Dr. James Lile

Southern Theatre presents Gas by Georg Kaiser, one of the most influential of the playwrights who pioneered expressionism in Germany at the time of World War I. Ethan Mordden defines expressionism as “forms of composition and stagecraft through which the wishes, fears, and obsessions of the human psyche are made audible and visible.” Gas (1918) is the second play in a trilogy - the others are Coral (1917) and Gas II (1920) - that explores whether the realization of human potential is possible in a society that too often tends to dehumanize. Kaiser takes us to a future where the entire planet is dependent on a single energy source: a gas that is made in only one factory. What happens when that source of energy is threatened? Are alternatives possible? Can people change? Will they?