Over-the-top summer theater presents a timely message

Thursday, Sept. 7, 2006 | 7:16 a.m.

Joe Hammond's balding head glistens blue as the beads of sweat reflect the stage lights.He stands with his legs apart and shakes his knees wildly.

Gritting his teeth, he says he's frustrated by the "hedonistic" American public that is no longer paying attention to what's happening to our country.

Hammond, 53, tall, thickly built and with the air of a master sergeant, looks as if he could break you in two if he were mad enough.

Tonight he's mad enough. It's the opening of Sam Shepard's "The God of Hell," a sci-fi political dark comedy, at the Community College of Southern Nevada. The cast just rehearsed a segment of the one-act, 70-minute attack on the Bush administration delivered in the wacky, over-the-top format of absurdist theater.

Hammond, a registered Libertarian who says he's moving toward anarchist because "this is no longer the country my father fought for in World War II," chose the controversial play for its timely message.

"We don't do safe productions here," he says, still shaking his knees. "All the theater we do is designed to think. My agenda is to get people to think. I would do anything to wake this country up. The ruling class is killing us. Killing us!"

He grits his teeth again. "If I could get a show where people get out of their seats and fight onstage, that's what I'm after. Our interest is to serve our students. We play right wing, left wing, whatever."

Welcome to CCSN's new approach to community theater. The school, which has traditionally served the senior population with its theatrical productions, is mixing it up with its summer program of cutting-edge, avant-garde plays.

The program, titled "Summer Chillers," started last year with David Mamet's "Sexual Perversity in Chicago," selected primarily - and successfully - to draw younger audiences. Hammond says he intends to bring in more political productions like "The God of Hell."

Among possible scripts for coming years, Hammond is looking at some doozies: "Corpus Christi," which details the second coming of a gay Christ in the modern age; Karen Hartman's two companion scripts - "Gum," which has caused campus protests by Islamic students, and "The Mother of Modern Censorship;" and "Bug," which will make you itch.

Brenda Talley, interim director of CCSN's Performing Arts Center, says the summer project was inspired by a Las Vegas Little Theater presentation a few years ago of "Bat Boy: The Musical" in its Backstage Theatre.

"We started talking," Talley says.

Since then she and Hammond have been looking at ways to draw different audiences by adding riskier summer performances that don't fit into their regular season. "Most community theaters rely on ticket sales," she says of the tried-and-true choices. "We have an opportunity as an educational institution to look at more styles of work and to take risks."

"The God of Hell" has been criticized as being over-the-top liberal propaganda that is so head-clobbering and hastily written that it fails in getting out the message. Shepard wrote the play before the 2004 presidential election to influence voters. Hammond refers to the production as the "unknown Shepard" because many companies are "worried about touching it."

On opening night more than 40 theatergoers fill the seats. The mostly middle-aged audience is sprinkled with twentysomethings and thirtysomethings.

The cast is convincing enough. Hammond (who replaced Bob Blomgren, whose death delayed the play's opening) plays Haynes, a plutonium-infected scientist. He's hiding out in the basement of Wisconsin dairy farmer Frank (Jim Williams) and his wife, Emma (Susan Lowe).

Chasing Haynes is Welch (Ernest Hemmings, co-founder of the now-defunct SEAT Theater company), a slick, aggressive government agent posing as a seller of patriotic paraphernalia. He takes over their home and lives and reprograms Haynes through torture, all the while discussing loyalty to one's government.

When Emma asks Frank, who has been swayed by Welch, "How could this happen?" Frank replies: "We weren't paying attention, Emma."

Hammond, who served as "The God of Hell" director until replacing Blomgren, sped up the 90-minute play so that it would "explode" onstage in a fast pace and appeal to younger viewers.

It's too much and too abstract for some in the audience.

"I don't understand it yet. I was hoping it would be more on point. I was expecting someone to tell the truth about the Bush administration," says a 30-ish woman, who won't give her name because "this is a society of list builders, and I don't want to be on a list."

Standing near the door, Renee De Bruyn, a longtime Shepard fan, says, "It was pretty clear to me."

Pauline Harvey agrees: "I think it's exactly what's happening - the confusion, the deceit, the ignorance of the public.

"We blithely go on our way without educating ourselves about the process. When a politician wants to tell the truth, we don't want to hear it. We don't want change."