Show and Tell post Number 1!

 Blue Surge by Rebecca Gillman 

Recently I read the play Blue Surge by Rebecca Gillman.  It was written in 2001.  It was produced for the first time at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in the spring of 2001.  You can find this play at Middleton library, that’s where I checked it out and read it in hard copy because Reading shows hat are longer than one act on a computer screen just make me sleepy, but it is indeed accessible at Middleton Library.   

Blue Surge is about a young girl of about 18 who makes her living by being a prostitute and along with other prostitutes; work at a massage parlor as a front.  Curt and Doug are two cops that have been watching this parlor because they suspect it to be a prostitute front.  They go there undercover but they are successful in catching the prostitutes in action.  It is here that Sandy meets Curt.  Concerned for Sandy Curt offers to help her in anyway he can so that she doesn’t have to resort to prostitution.  Eventually this causes major riffs in his ability to continue having his job and makes his relationship with his fiancé fall to shambles and they both in the end fall for one another.   Through their relationship they inspire each other to look beyond their circumstances and try to rise above them and truly make something of themselves rather than just trying to gain independence from Sandy’s mother and prove herself to be better than her or by Curt getting a job that he rally loves and that is suitable for his intelligence. 

One dramaturgical choice that Gillman made that I found to be unnecessary but that I enjoyed is that she chooses to stage the scene when Curt and his fiancé Beth have their fight and break up.  She could have just cut of that scene completely and not written it in and just had Curt mention the blow out to Sandy or even Doug in dialogue.  I like that she did include it though because the scene personally made me sympathize for Beth and without that scene it would have been nearly impossible to evoke sympathy for her.  I like that she included it because it was a n efficient way for the audience to be able to see more of a struggle Curt had in handling things with Beth and that it wasn’t because she was a simply a mean person, but just because they weren’t on the same page.  I think if I had not read the scene of the blow out I would have just written her off as a crazy ex-fiancé and then Curt ending things with her partially for Sandy wouldn’t have been nearly as a big decision as it was. 

Another dramaturgical choice that stood out to me was that Sandy was the one who showed up to Curt’s door, not Curt coming to Sandy.  Typically we see the opposite happening, but Gillman made Blue Surge to be an exception.  I think that choice added a lot to the story and gave us a better understanding of Sandy’s character. Sandy acts like she has almost everything together and like she can handle herself and that she doesn’t really mind her job because it pays, but in that moment she had a weak moment and she was the one who searched for help, even though for the majority of the show se seems to be against outside help.  I feel like it shows a very hopeful side of Sandy early on in the play before the majority of people is aware of her hopefulness at the end of the play.