by ASHLEY MILLER
for the Sequim Gazette
Breaking news!
Zombies, monsters and garden gnomes are invading the Little Theatre stage as the Peninsula College Players present “Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom” March 10-12.
The award-winning play by Jennifer Haley centers on a suburban subdivision — the kind with identical houses. Within the subdivision, parents find their teenagers addicted to an online horror video game. The game’s setting is a subdivision — with identical houses — and the goal is to smash through an army of zombies and escape the neighborhood for good.
As the line blurs between “virtual” and “reality,” both parents and players realize that fear has a life of its own.
Director Andrew Shanks, a Peninsula College alumnus and recent graduate from Central Washington University, makes his directorial debut with the show, which he promises to be a unique theatrical event full of ominous foreboding, biting satire and garden tools.
“You don’t have to play video games to get the message in Haley’s play,” Shanks said. “You don’t have to know LEET or have a World of Warcraft account or anything like that. It’s more about being a parent than anything else.”
The conflict, Shank said, doesn’t come from the video game’s violence but from the lack of communication between generations — something easily understood by most parents and teenagers.
“It’s a dark satire about the suburban ‘dream’ and all these unfulfilled expectations of the 1940s ‘nuclear family’ when applied to our generation,” he said. “While technology advances, it also widens the gap between people actually communicating with one another.”
The play stars Gwendolynn Barbee-Yow, Quinton Chastain, John Manno, Amy Meyer, Zachery Moorman, Jeremiah Paulsen, Sean Peck-Collier, Colby Thomas, Apryl Weikel and Corinne Wright.
Richard Stephens, a Port Angeles Light Opera Association member in charge of costumes, saw the play during rehearsal and described it as “chilling.”
“First-rate production — really challenging and makes you think,” Stephens said. “A very topical drama.”
The play contains mature themes and content and is intended for mature audiences only.
For more information, visit www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=192349740794595.
