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THEATER Sitting in on a 'Tea Party' Comment By John Darling For the Tidings DailyTidings.com By John Darling For the Tidings Posted Jul. 14, 2016 at 8:59 PM By John Darling For the Tidings Posted Jul. 14, 2016 at 8:59 PM » RELATED CONTENT • Not quite fit to a 'Tea Party' » Social News Far from bashing the far right, Ashland Contemporary Theater’s upcoming “Chatting With the Tea Party” elbows its way past the rageful polarities of today’s politics and forces audiences to experience conservatives as regular human beings with jobs and families — but as people you likely never met (if you are a Democrat) and therefore don’t know much about. The play uses a documentary approach, with a narrator portraying playwright Rick Orloff and introducing 16 Tea Party members he interviewed, using a supportive, good-listener approach, around the country. The play shows their actual comments, but the only liberal voices are random comebacks from four actors who act like a Greek chorus. “Orloff (Daniel Sessions Stephens) talks directly to the audience. He went to Tea Party meetings and every word is something they said,” notes ACT Artistic Director Jeannine Grizzard. “There’s a lot about guns, Obamacare and how states have been helped by the federal government, as with the Tennessee Valley Authority. He got the idea at a Thanksgiving dinner in New York, where all his liberal friends had lots of opinions about the Tea Party but no one had ever met one.” Surprisingly, says Grizzard, all but one of the characters are rational and soft-spoken, unlike the stereotypes from Fox News, but there was one clearly racist person from the Bronx who is yelling “enough!” about big federal spending programs that go on forever — with no control by the common folk. One character, Meg, complains about the left favoring the “collective” over the individual, adding she just wants the government to “leave me alone” as much as possible. “He says his liberal friends were upset with how he portrays liberals,” Grizzard notes, adding that, in general, the interviewees “were loving and thoughtful to their children and talked of their spouses with respect and gratitude and were no weirder than you or me.” All the comments from the liberal chorus were actual comments from his liberal friends, she says. Orloff, in a statement, says of his journey: "At different times, I was surprised, amused, frustrated, appalled, challenged and even moved. I could never predict what the next person would say to me, which created a delicious suspense. I hope that audience members, regardless of their politics, will leave the theater feeling they’ve had an intimate, revealing, and honest look at a fascinating group of people." What is the purpose of the play? It’s not to resolve the immense political gap in our nation or to end up all tied in a nice bow. That will take a century, if it happens, says Grizzard. “The purpose is in the tagline for this play, that ‘beyond politics, there are people.’ This could be hard for Ashland, which is pretty deep in the liberal intelligentsia, for the most part, with the Shakespeare Festival contributing a lot to this liberal think tank in this country. “What I wanted was more tolerance. And conservatives need get a more world-centric perspective but that’s not going to happen when they are being called idiots and Nazis, who want to destroy the country. I hope it helps everyone move toward a more mature dialog, with more facts and less demonizing.” The cast includes Karen Douglas, Tim Kelly, Jennifer Lauren, John Lambie, Tony Owens, Daniel Stephens, Joseph Suste and Cynthia Tank. They each play two people. It plays at the Ashland Community Center, 59 Winburn Way in downtown Ashland. Performances start at 8 p.m. Saturdays and 2 and 8 p.m. Sundays, July 16 to 31. Tickets are $15, available at Paddington Station, Grocery Outlet and online at www.ashlandcontemporarytheatre.org . For more information, call 541-646-2971. John Darling is an Ashland freelance writer. Reach him at [email protected]. By John Darling For the Tidings DailyTidings.com By John Darling For the Tidings Posted Jul. 14, 2016 at 8:59 PM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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