OLIVER KIMOKEO | sports editor
photo | OLIVER KIMOKEO
Senior theatre arts major Matthew Gilmore shares his true-to-life extraordinary tale of ordinary "Joe."


APU Theater brings back a crowd favorite.

“Joe is an ordinary guy, but the issue is that ordinary people are extraordinary because they are made in the image of God. They are capable of extraordinary things,” director Brian Mercer said of his self-written play. “The average guy out there can make a huge difference in the world.”

After successfully screening “Joe: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man” in its initial run to audiences in 2003 and 2004, the Drama Ministry Team led by Mercer decided to bring Joe back for 2008. It is unique that Mercer is in the position of both writer and director. While it allows him to have full creative control of the intention of the play, it also prevents him from expressing a new interpretation that another director would bring to the play.

“I started with theme before I went to plot,” Mercer said of his process in creating Joe.

Theme is important for Mercer. He wanted to make sure the message was the paramount focus over the course of the play.

“The play is about deciding whether your life matters,” Mercer said. “The context of the times is just a tool to get us to think about the issues.”

While Joe remains true to the directorial vision, Mercer allows his actors to bring creative control to their roles when it comes to making the characters their own. This is no more evident than through the decision to put on a split-cast production. One casting set performs on Thursdays and Fridays; the other will perform on Saturdays.

The reason to use two casts for this production is due to the summer schedule of the Drama Ministry Team. They will perform two different sets of six-week tours in the western United States. One team will stay in California while the other will be traveling through all the states bordering California. The summer tour will last from May 25 to July 6.

Meanwhile, to enable for two different casts to perform the same material, most parts are portrayed by two different actors. Therefore, if you were to attend a Friday and a Saturday performance, you will see the same script in a different context.

“If you see the other cast do the same thing, you’ll see that they are very different,” Mercer said.

Even though there are two Joes, played by theatre arts majors Kevin Shewey on Thursday and Friday and Kory DeSoto on Saturday, there is no split decision on who the character is. Joe is an outstanding citizen and a lifelong follower of God. Tragedy unfolds around him but Joe always remains true to himself and his surrounding friends and family.

“Joe is a very close character to me,” Shewey said. “I’ve had a lot of similar experiences and parallels in my life and playing Joe has made it very personal to me.”

Joe is a character who progresses from age 11 to age 58 within the play. Shewey said it was easy to find inspiration from his own life for Joe’s younger years. But as Joe becomes an elderly man, Shewey must find his inspiration from other sources.

Shewey plays Joe with a subtle confidence and a pocketful of gusto while DeSoto plays Joe as a fragile guy with a quick self-depricating wit. In essence, two plays of the same script are presented to the audience on the three nights because of the difference of portrayals.

If you saw both performances, you would have your favorite Joe. I preferred Shewey’s performance to DeSoto’s because he created a certain aura around Joe in showing a strong inner self. DeSoto played Joe with too much vulnerability for my taste. DeSoto’s Joe ultimately becomes a guy who is walked all over.

Both men remain true in the character and they both have equal impact in the role. Most likely, your favorite Joe will lie in whose performance you saw first because you fall in love at first sight with the character for being an uncompromising man of God.

To transition Joe’s life from childhood to adulthood, the play was set from the 1960s to the 2010s. Mercer wanted the play to have a context within the times to give the audience reference points to their own experiences.

“The play is probably more enjoyable for people my age who have lived through all those eras,” Mercer said. “People of my generation are going through the mid-life crisis thing and we all have more days behind us than we do in front of us.”

To further demonstrate the progression of time, various musical hits and pop culture references are used to capsule the eras. Mercer purposely skipped over certain years so you will not be seeing Joe as a disco maverick or as a grunge poet. Some eras are not meant to be relived, Mercer told the audience before the second act.

Furthermore, Mercer wrote the play with various motifs scattered throughout. You will observe the same setting with the same characters at different stages in their life.

“Life has a way of repeating itself,” Mercer said. “There are things that your parents did that you say you would never do and then you’re in that situation. You have a choice to make: are you going to react to this inevitable thing the same way or are you going to be your own person?”

“Joe” does an outstanding job mixing genres drama, comedy, tragedy to create a truly diverse play. You will be laughing at one moment and crying at the next. In particular, the end of Act I is an entertaining ordeal as Joe watches over a woman who has short-term memory loss. True physical comedy emerges as the characters trade jabs at each other reminiscent of an Abbott & Costello routine.

Additionally, Joe has a minimalist feel with only one permanent set and an ever-revolving cycle of props on the main stage. Within this structure, actors will be helping in the backstage when they are not performing a scene.

“We are all responsible for our costumes,” senior theater arts major Rebekah Stratton said, who plays Ellen and Nancy on different nights. “Essentially, we are responsible for our makeup and costume changes.”

Mercer said the “real show” is backstage because there is a sense of organized chaos with all the constant costume changes and instant age progressions.

“I sit backstage all of act two and gray everyone’s hair,” junior theater arts major Rebekah Vigran, who plays Zoe on Thursday and Friday, said.

Even though Joe is an enjoyable experience for all those involved, Mercer’s goal for the team is to see God’s influence over the audience through the production.

“On our side, I hope the students have gotten to watch a lot of great ‘God moments’ happen over the course of six months,” Mercer said. “I hope they see that over and over again so it will inspire them to really pursue ministry with their lives.”