Tonight I was at the armory, finally getting to see Portland Center Stage's Apollo (the world premier of all three parts of the play together). I was not entirely sure what to expect, and so the multimedia, Avant-garde ballet speckled with seemingly hundreds of historical figures from Hitler to Mickey Mouse that I got came as a kind of wonderful shock.
Apollo was highly educational and I feel like it will take a while to really digest all the information that was presented to me in the show. It was sobering. There were times throughout the play (whether I was learning about the connection between our space program and the Nazis, or I was facing up to the deep injustices of segregation during the Space Race era) that I found myself backing away emotionally as though I could not or did not want to believe that this was the same United States of America I'd grown up in. Yes, it was very sobering.
There's no doubt it was a well done show. I enjoyed it, not only as a production, but also as a catalyst to a new way of looking at some of the historical events that have shaped our nation. Theatre that makes you think, one of my favorite things on the planet.
Apollo is part of the Fertile Ground Festival as it is a new work written and directed by Nancy Keystone, and it's coming to the end of its run, so definitely go see it!
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