I wish I had written this blog post last week as soon as I finished watching the second run of "gEner8-tion Txt" here at Lehigh so that all of you would have rushed to see it Sunday afternoon, or this mid-week. It's still running. It closes Saturday night so make sure you go check it out.
I had to get that off my chest because this production is truly breath-taking. I have never seen anything like it before; not here at Lehigh, not anywhere. To put it in the words of cast member David Quiñones, "It's revolutionary."
The beauty of it: it's written by cast members and director Kashi Johsnon.
While it doesn't follow your traditional story plot like most plays (it doesn't have one, to put it at that), it does send a message deep into your skin about what today's generation really is all about. Texting, tweeting, emails, youtube, etc. all the social media is explored and presented in a comical, but at times very dramatic ways to evoke the emotions today's youth feels.
There's dancing, there's singing and rapping, but it's not a musical. Far from it. This show is a confession: told from today's generation to the world in order to try and explain that they are mere victims of the age of information and technology, and that they simply use it to express themselves, whether it's in 140 characters or less.
The show is not all about texting or technology. There are personal stories or "truths" that the cast members show through different mediums. Allie Linn breaks into an intese dance with vocal overdubs that projects desperations and rage, similar to the hate song in "Billy Elliot." Other members of the cast sing, rap, talk and shout their most personal stories with such honesty and comfort (and sometimes discomfort), and that's what makes this production stand out from others.
There is no BS here. What you see is what you get.
And what you get is damn good.
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