Can’t fake the folk
Photos by Rick Townley/DN
ARI DiFRANCO, a self-made music giant, rocked the
Ranch Bowl’s sand volleyball courts last Friday when she
brought her “F-Word Tour” to Omaha. DIFranco played a
two-hour set to a near-capacity crowd and was joined on
stage by members of Maceo Parker’s band, including the
living legend of saxophone himself.
L----I
Omaha playwright looks
at dark side of humanity
By Brock Wendlandt
Staff writer
The process of completely opening
oneself and facing what is most deeply
rooted in the heart’s desire can be one
of the most unnerving encounters in
the human experience.
What can be even more brutal than
this honesty is the possibility of
achieving this moment of clarity while
in the presence of loved ones.
In his play, “Something Is Wrong”,
Bob Vivian brings together a middle
class family on a vacation in Northern
Michigan to uncover these secrets that
people hold closest to themselves.
“It is a bizarre, strange and twisted
play,” said Vivian, the 32 year-old
Omaha playwright and English gradu
ate student/teacher at UNL.
“I want to raise a deeper sense of
questioning with this play. I want to
ask, ‘If one makes it in American cul
ture — what then?’ Where does a per
son’s human obligation end?”
Vivian, who has had 20 of his plays
produced in New York, will run
“Something Is Wrong” at Creighton
University’s Lied Center for the
Performing Arts, July 8-25, Thursday
through Sunday nights at 8 p.m.
The play, Vivian said, will offer the
audience a lens to view a variety of
topics. It involves such issues as con
sumerism, moral responsibility and
human isolation, but it centers on a
family’s ability to communicate with
each other what is most deeply real in
each individual’s life.
“All the characters seem to be in a
dark place where they are truly desper
ate to find something meaningful,”
said Phyllis Doughman, who plays
Louis in the play. “Most of the audi
ence will be able to identify with at
least one of the characters.”
Allowing people to relate to char
acters, Vivian said, is what makes the
ater a communal experience where
people can analyze their own thoughts.
“I always try to tap into the mystery
of being a human being,” he said, “and
this, as it does in ‘Something Is
Wrong’, can take an infinite variety of
forms.”
Vivian’s wife, Kay, who plays
Elaine Joy, attested to the inquisitive
nature of her husband’s work.
“Bob’s work is amazing,” she said.
“It deals with the way people live sur
facely, but then it digs deeper to ques
tion humanity.”
Vivian said his own life has mir
rored this search for diversity in
mankind.
He described his upbringing in
Omaha as a very conventional and lov
ing one, but also as a very sheltered
one. He found that this often shielded
him from a lot of human reality.
“It was wonderful to grow up safe,”
he said, “but I feel that my limited
experiences kept me too far away from
anything raw or deeply real.
Everything was at a distance and
seemed sanitized.”
Vivian sought out to find what he
was not able to in his confined world.
The result has been a body of work that
includes his plays, but also includes
essay writing and poetry that have
been published or are forthcoming in
New York Quarterly, Creative
Nonfiction, Salt Hill and the Onset
Review.
“In my work and teaching,” he said,
“I try to depict the incredible, diverse
and valid world that surrounds us.”
He added that his goals as a play
wright are “simple, but yet difficult”
“I want to get better as a writer,
write from a pure place, write for other
reasons than money and write for his
tory - instead of writing for what’s
popular now,” he said.
“I would really like to emulate the
masters, (Anton) Chekov and
(Samuel) Beckett, and write works that
will become apart of the culture in a
meaningful and deep way.”
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Thursday, July 8,19991 Daily Nebraskan Summer Edition ■ Page 9