Trying to Survive

Heartbreak in the heartland. Depression in the Dust Bowl. Brain damage and death.

Got the giggles yet?

"I probably do have a favorite play, and it's this one," says Glenn Edwards, director of "The Diviners," opening tonight at Las Vegas Academy's Black Box Theatre. "It makes statements about relationships and a person questioning their faith and people in a desperate situation because it takes place during the Depression. It's accidental, but it speaks so much to us now."

Depressing as the Depression analogy is, "The Diviners" positions hope amid strife. Jim Leonard Jr.'s play, a Steinbeck-style drama of despair in 1930s Indiana, follows C.C. Showers, a preacher whose faith is on the fritz in the midst of the country's calamity. He wanders into the mythical town of Zion, where he bonds with 14-year-old Buddy Layman, but after an accident in the river that left his mother drowned while trying to save him, Buddy now has the mental capacity of a 3-year-old, a paralyzing fear of the water and, oddly, an uncanny ability to "divine" water sources for wells that are crucial to the town's farmers.

One disillusioned over religion, the other disabled but touched by a special gift, the two connect in a friendship through which the playwright explores complex themes about relationships. C.C. earns the boy's trust, and begins to ease Buddy's fear of the river, though his own fallout with faith causes him to balk at taking up the Bible again to become minister of Zion. "This is someone who thought he had everything figured out," says the preacher's portrayer, Ryan Wesen. "But with the Depression, he feels powerless and doesn't want anything to do with God."

While most drama thrives on external conflict, "The Diviners" departs from narrative norms, its main characters coping with internal demons. Funny lines lighten the mood, but the play immediately reveals Buddy's fate, both opening and closing with eulogies, based on a climax that isn't a neat wrap-up. "It's open to interpretation by the audience," Wesen says. "In how I'm portraying C.C., after Buddy dies, he hasn't completely regained his faith, but he's started to ask whether he wants to keep believing again."

Surrounding the central friendship are the tribulations of townsfolks scraping to survive. "When we selected this play last year, we weren't in these circumstances, but the core of the play is similar to things going on today," Edwards says. "These are people working for a common goal of just existence. They don't have much, but what they have is very dear to them. And certain lines have struck us. They talk about Herbert Hoover a lot and it's very easy for us to say, 'George Bush.' "

Guiding his student cast, Edwards' advice was uncomplicated.

"They were trying to analyze characters, get all technical, and I said, 'When it comes down to it, what these people want is to make sure there's a meal on the table every night,' " he says. "These are very simple people happy with the simplest of things, and that's one of the points the playwright makes."

From a staging standpoint, certain elements are more complex. "This play has some stagecraft in it that when I first saw it, absolutely blew me away," Edwards says about depicting swimming scenes. "I had never imagined you could do something like that onstage. Without giving it away, we're using just sound and light to create an effect that makes the idea of swimming actually believable onstage."

Ultimately, though, visual effects serve an emotional story in "The Diviners," one that Tia Konsur, alternating in the role of Buddy's older sister, says makes an essential point during another round of hard times.

"It's a positive message about what we should be doing now, as opposed to griping about our economic situation," Konsur says. "That we should help out ourselves, and one another."

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sborn feld@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.