Eastern theater program packs up for ‘Pocatello’

It’s not often that theater fans in the Spokane area get to see new works by nationally established playwrights.

It helps, perhaps, when that playwright hails from Moscow, Idaho.

Samuel D. Hunter, winner of a 2014 MacArthur Fellowship (aka the “Genius grant”) is author of the Obie Award-winning “A Bright New Boise,” and “The Whale,” which won a Drama Desk Award. Not quite a year ago, he premiered “Pocatello” at Playwrights Horizon in New York. The production starred T.R. Knight of “Grey’s Anatomy” fame as Eddie, manager of a failing Italian chain restaurant in his hometown of Pocatello, a town he is finding increasingly unrecognizable.

This weekend, the theater department at Eastern Washington University is presenting the West Coast premiere of “Pocatello,” directed by visiting guest artist Jadd Davis. This will be the play’s third production – “Pocatello” is as new as a play can be without being commissioned, Davis said.

“It’s definitely on the way up,” Davis said, adding that the newness was part of its appeal. “Knowing it was that was going to be brand new meant I could really interpret it without a whole lot of historical stuff. That it also was from Idaho, I was like ‘Oh my god, yes. That totally seals the deal for me.’”

Davis, a Post Falls native who serves as artistic director of Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre, instantly made a connection with “Pocatello.”

“It’s so good,” Davis said, “and it so chronicles small town Western America well, in a relatively heartbreaking way. And as with the rest of his work, there’s an uplifting element as well.”

The cast consists mostly of students and two professional actors, Gene Engene, former head of the EWU theater program, and local Melody Deatherage. Eli Druschella is Eddie.

The play is reminiscent of “August: Osage County” in that it has a big, “epic Greek tragedy feel about very small, minute lives,” Davis said.

For Eddie, the restaurant is closing and it’s a big deal to him, Davis said, but as the play progresses we see that Eddie’s angst is less about the restaurant and more him missing human connection. “Every single one of these characters is dying for someone to take an interest in their lives,” Davis said.

Hunter, it might be said, is having a moment in the Inland Northwest. The University of Idaho staged “A Bright New Boise” last fall, and the play will open in Spokane at the Modern Theater in April.

“The nice thing is we don’t have to do it as a gimmick. The moment is deserved because the plays are good,” Davis said. “We’re in a nice place in the Northwest where people are picking their material intelligently, based on its quality. But, when comparing apples to apples and everything’s good and you have this local story, then why not pick the one by the local guy?”

Hunter, who now lives in New York, said he’s thrilled to have his work being presented in the Northwest.

“It’s only recently that plays of mine have started to make their way back to the area from which they came. It’s always very cool,” he said in a phone interview from Dallas, where he was in rehearsal for a new play, “Clarkston.” (The companion piece – “Lewiston,” of course – will premiere this season in New Haven, Connecticut.)

Hunter’s work, while often set in Idaho, presents a fictionalized version of his home state. He’s not setting out, he said, to “besmirch” Idaho or the towns he writes about.

“The plays, even though they are specific to Idaho and the Inland Northwest in some ways, the attempts of the plays, the big swing of the plays, is to say something about all of America,” Hunter said.

And while corporate America is often the backdrop – “Boise” is set in Hobby Lobby, “Clarkston” at a Costco, “Pocatello” in an Olive Garden – the point of the plays is not to bash big box stores, Hunter said.

“Often these plays, and certainly ‘Pocatello,’ are about people who are searching for some greater meaning in their lives. Often that takes the form of God in the plays, but sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s like the central character in ‘Pocatello’ who is desperately searching for some kind of community and home,” Hunter said. “It’s one thing to put a character who’s looking for God … to put them in a church, but it’s another thing entirely to place them in a Wal-mart break room.”