It has been two years since the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and now there is a play that tries to come to terms with it. As part of a project to mark the anniversary, the NoPassport theater alliance has organized a series of readings of The Way of Water by Caridad Svich around the country.
Svich's play "pits the BP oil spill next to the lives of those affected by it," reads a summary on the project's website (nopassport.org/thewayofthewater). "It's a story about four people making do as best they can, living their lives, and just trying to stay afloat in the land of many compromised dreams, as the devastation of a to-this-day mostly under-reported health crisis scandal in the Gulf is played out on a human scale. It's a play about poverty in America, rumors and truth, what is said and what gets written, and the quest for an honorable life."
St. Petersburg's American Stage is among the almost 50 theaters presenting the play in a reading. It will be performed tonight by Rolando Ramos, Stephen Ray, Careena Cornette and Natalie Symons.
Plays and other work by Svich, who spent part of her childhood in Florida, have been widely produced in the United States and abroad. The House of the Spirits, her play based on the novel by Isabel Allende, received the 2011 American Theatre Critics Association Primus Prize. A fully staged premiere of The Way of Water has not been announced.
John Fleming can be reached at fleming@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8716.
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