NAU Theater stages ‘Forgotten Places,’ homage to simpler way of life

NAU theater students

Mac GrovesForgotten Places: Looking for a Lost America, a play that captures simpler times in the American landscape through stories, music and images, will run March 7-9 at NAU’s Studio Theater.

Written by Groves, a theater professor at NAU, and directed by senior theater student Jenna Worden, the play is a multimedia piece that weaves together the stories told by people in a small Midwestern town as they trace a forgotten way of life and the people and events that brought them here today.  The stories are layered with approximately 200 projected images and the American folk music and spirituals that defined a bygone era.

“It’s not theater in the sense that you may be used to, as in coming to the theater to hear one story,” Groves said. “It’s a series of stories that I’ve grown up with, some are real, and others are slightly fictitious. It’s also about roots and family connections, about keeping the spirit of people and events alive through the telling of stories.”

“As we become more urban and dependent upon technology, our roots become obscured. When the storyteller is gone, what happens to the story?”

Groves spent approximately five years interviewing the people in his life to gather the material for “Forgotten Places” and identify the stories he wanted to tell before writing the play while on sabbatical.

The cast includes undergraduates Jade Dillard, Marcus Strocks, Imani Barnett, Annamarie Carlson, Nick Hodge and John Grant, with each member serving in multiple roles as they switch from narrator to character throughout the play.

Performances will be at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 7, and Saturday, March 8, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, March 9, in the Studio Theater of the Performing Arts Building.

Individual tickets for the performance are $14 for general public, $12 for seniors, NAU faculty and staff, $8 for children and $2 for NAU students. Tickets may be purchased online, at NAU’s Central Ticket Office in the University Union or by calling (928) 523-5661 or (888) 520-7214.

Free parking is available after 4:30 p.m. and on weekends in parking lot P13 behind Cline Library.