Teens, technology collide in CBT play 'Speech and Debate'

Tyler Padget, Tara Wells and Kevin Bohleber star in Clarence Brown Theatre's 'Speech and Debate.'

Tyler Padget, Tara Wells and Kevin Bohleber star in Clarence Brown Theatre's 'Speech and Debate.'

The act of communicating used to be simple. You picked up the phone and dialed, sent a fax or plopped across from someone and spoke.

Nowadays, there's an onslaught of choices. While e-mail, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, texting, YouTube, and everything with an "i" in front of it make reaching out to someone easier, it also has its problems. Technology can drop the act of communicating into the sometimes faceless void of cyberspace, and it comes with unintended consequences. One's identity is no longer a matter of personal experience, but something open to creative enterprise. The information communicated is, more than ever, beyond one's control.

In the upcoming Clarence Brown Theatre's "Speech and Debate" by Stephen Karam, this issue of modern communication and identity is thrown into the most chaotic, hormone-driven, coming-of-age period ever known to humanity: high school. Following an apparent online sex scandal involving one of their teachers, three students form an after-school debate team to expose the messy truth. Their journey takes them through hilarious self-realizations where their own secrets could become fodder for the very masses they wish to enlighten.

"The play is a visually fun ride," says visiting director Mace Archer, "and asks how do kids communicate these days, do we own our own information, and what is news worthy?" Archer sees the play as a very funny and timely look at how teenagers navigate through the avalanche of information they face daily, and how they are able to negotiate an identity within it.

Archer adds: "Stephen Karam has an amazing ear for how young persons speak" and is able to touch on poignant issues without becoming too mired in the drama of the trauma.

The play runs March 25-April 3 in the Lab Theatre on UT's campus. It stars Tyler Padgett, Tara Wells and Kevin Bohleber.

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