Play gives absurdist take on modern life

The critically acclaimed "Life During Wartime" draws as much from Dostoevsky as from Swift.\n"In the roughly five years since Keith Reddin began spending more time writing than acting, he has produced a steady stream of black comedies about the underground of corruption, political and moral, that lurks just beneath the slick sitcom surface of American life," wrote Frank Rich of the New York Times after the play's 1991 off-broadway opening. "'Life During Wartime' is an archetypal sample of its author's works."\nOpening at 7 p.m. tonight and running through Oct. 28, the play opens the T300 Studio Theatre season. Tickets are $8.50 for general admission and $7.50 for students and seniors.\n"Life During Wartime" relates the story of Tommy, an impressionable young man employed at a home security company. His morally bankrupt employer Heinrich educates him in the ways of hard sell tactics, encouraging him to instill paranoia in potential customers.\n"You don't have to sell fear -- it sells itself," he advises. \nSo Tommy plays off the paranoia lurking in the suburban paradise in which the play is set. During his first house call, he not only makes a sale but picks up a mistress. He quickly rises up the ranks, even making it into a television commercial. \nBut he later learns a dark truth. To bulk up sales, Heinrich breaks into some of the homes that he protects. The situation escalates, and it leads to murder. Stuck in the crossfire, Tommy is torn between materialism and morality.\nPunctuated with appearances of the dissident Swiss theologian John Calvin, "Life During Wartime" is a "sharply satirical exploration of American moral malaise ... interweaving the personal and the political, the antic and the tragic," according to the alternative weekly The Seattle Times.\nServing as the voice of fundamental human wickedness, Calvin is "our narrator of sorts," said director Dennis Black. "I have selected to use a 'film noir' quality and feel in the production and 'film noir' depends heavily on narration."\nBlack said he was pleased at the opportunity to direct the quirky play, an absurdist fable.\n"I don't think we have a category for this new type of theater," he said. "During the last 20 years, playwrights have been writing in a style that is not defined by one term -- a more eclectic style of writing."\nAnd that's the vein of the T300 series, which also features the melancholy "Stanton's Garage" and "The Food Chain," a screwball comedy about urban neurotics.\n"The series is comprised of cutting-edge contemporary American drama," said Christine Woodworth, media liaison for the Department of Theatre and Drama. "All the plays have been written and produced in the past 20 years. And they've all made their mark either in regional theater or off-Broadway. Eventually, in a 100 years or so, they may end up the new classics."\nTickets are available either through the Auditorium Box Office or by phone through all TicketMaster (812) 333-9955. For ticket information, call (812) 855-1103. Parking is available in the Jordan Avenue Parking Garage located east of the Theatre, or in the Main Library parking lot, located north of the Theatre. Due to construction, allow ample time to find parking.