Failure to Reach the Endzone

Barnard College's production of Endzone at Minor Latham Playhouse this weekend was a show about football with only one male cast member-and he was the referee. Based very loosely on Don DeLillo's novel of the same name, Endzone failed to take enough from the original to do justice to the book or embellish it enough to create a coherent and original script. The show raised questions about gender roles in the masculine sport of football and fear of the government, but the answers were lost in a jumble of movement and dialogue.

During the Q&A session after the performance, one of the directors, David Neumann, stressed that it was "very challenging to do a multidisciplinary, multi departmental piece." The production was a collaboration between the work of two classes at Barnard: Mary Cochran's Dance Composition and Neumann's Movement for Actors. For the most part, the students rehearsed separately in their respective classes, which led to a lack of cohesion between the dancing and the acting on stage.

Amidst a generally muddled performance, one actress led the show as she transformed completely into a brutal male football coach. Krista Worby, BC '07, who played Coach Creed for her senior thesis in performance, acted so successfully that the audience actually doubted her sex. With a faultless Texan accent and fabulous makeup, Worby was able to invoke dread with her barbaric shouting and powerful presence on stage. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast did not equally impress. The directors seemed torn between finding feminine grace in football and producing a harsh depiction of the crude masculinity of the sport. As a result, the other actresses struggled to transcend gender roles and convincingly act as football players.

Despite Endzone's shortcomings, the artistic staff deserves to be commended for the modern set design, lighting, and costumes. The performance ended with successful apocalyptic imagery, including large white zeros on a blue computer background projected onto the back of the stage, accompanied by static noise and fake snow falling from the ceiling.

Endzone's final monologue, preceding the apocalypse, included the lines "I'm afraid of the United States of America. Why should I be afraid of my own government? There's something wrong here." Similar sentiment has been overused by contemporary theater to the point of making such an important issue seem banal. If a director is going to include such monologues, he must also include some kind of comprehensible commentary explaining them. Hopefully Neumann will take this into consideration when he directs his full production with Barnard students in October 2007.