“Leave your powers at the door” read a sign on the coatrack in Dionysus’s bar in the Masque and Triangle production of 3 Gods Walk Into a Bar. Directed by Jessica Hall ’14, and featuring an ensemble cast of new and veteran actors, the play was staged April 12 through 14 in Brehmer Theater.
Playwright Ross Brooks wrote the comedy based on the idea that the Greek gods are losing their “jobs” to the new game in town, Jesus and the Christian God.
Three Gods Walk Into A Bar was produced by Masque & Triangle, ԱƵ’s student theater group. (Photo by Ashlee Eve ’14)
Last week, during his campus visit, Brooks worked with the cast and crew, as well as led two discussions about the play and its implications.
For Hall, a member of the Educational Outreach Board of Masque and Triangle, the opportunity to direct the play and solicit feedback from the playwright himself was a dream come true. Hall had been interested in Greek mythology ever since she took Core 151: Legacies of the Ancient World with Professor Matt Leone.
Then, last year, Hall came upon Brooks’s script when her family raved about the play after seeing it in her hometown of Nashville (where Brooks is also from). It was like a sign from the gods, and Hall knew she wanted to produce the play at ԱƵ.
While there is a lot of humor injected into the play — the gods, Hera, Zeus, Dionysus, and Hermes, are constantly punning on their godliness — the concept behind it is more serious.
Calling into question the whole idea of religion, the play not only entertained but also posed important questions for the audience, including students in the classics and religion departments as well as Core 151 (departmental sponsors of the event).
As Dionysus (played by Dan Kwartler ’15) said, the humans “give us shape, form, and function,” and therefore, the gods are at the mercy of the mortals and their wishes.
With the entrance of Jesus Christ (Chris Donnelly ’15) in white overalls and a plaid shirt, Zeus (Dan Levy ’12), Hera (Alex Magnaud ’12), Hermes (Eric Bryden ’14), and Dionysus are sent into a tailspin, listening to his new ideas about how to be a deity.
Hermes chooses to join Jesus’s new group of deities, under pressure from Michael (Will Reisinger ’15), who serves them their unemployment papers and is not-so-subtly representative of Michael the Archangel. The rest of the gods decide to float into legend.
Closing with Jesus, Michael, and the Greek gods happily grabbing a drink at Dionysus’s bar, there was time for one final joke: before the curtain fell, the cast froze into an imitation of da Vinci’s Last Supper.