Wilderness at Meridith-Dunbar October 3-4-5-6

Because of construction in the fine arts section, Temple High School's first theatre production of the school year will be performed at Meridith-Dunbar Auditorium, 1717 E Avenue J, Temple, TX 76501. Performances are Thursday-Saturday, October 3-4-5 at 8 p.m. with a Sunday matinee on October 6 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $8 in advance, $10 at the door. The play contains adult language. Advance tickets are available from students and also online at CentralTexasTickets.com. There are also plans to be able to offer credit card sales at the door.

     A moving multimedia documentary theatre piece, Wilderness speaks to our collective search for connection and hope as families survive the extraordinary pressures and complexities that accompany coming of age in 21st Century America.
     The play is anchored by six real families’ stories — narratives that involve issues of mental health, addiction, and gender and sexual identity, inspired by firsthand interviews and field research conducted over an 18-month period. The six teens stand at the brink of emotional chaos, lost in social stigma, insecurity, aggression and anger. Anguished grown-ups and troubled children all search for answers to complicated problems.
     Cole (Matthew Harris) has anger issues and experiments with drugs, once climbing an 80-foot crane while high. Chloe (Kerryn Eckenrode) took to self-harm as an escape from online bullying. Dylan (Anna Gontscharow) is transgender, and began lying pathologically as a way of coping with the trauma of coming out. Michael (Cameron Hooper) is dealing with issues of anger and violence. Sophia (Torrie Culp) deals with severe anxiety and suffers from panic attacks. Elizabeth (Genevieve Myers) is a young woman who deals with her anger management issues through recreational drugs.
     A character simply called Mom (Olivia Cabrera) offers a parental perspective. Her son has barricaded himself in his room and won’t communicate. She makes a series of frantic phone calls, seeking help first from emergency services, then from the wilderness program. Between calls, she interviews parents of teens who are played by Temple school administrators and faculty members.
     The teens relate their stories in fragments, as they hike, set up camp, attend therapy sessions and argue with their counselors. The program is demanding, beginning when the teens are “gooned”: kidnapped with their parents’ permission, then flown to a remote part of Utah, where they sleep on the ground and traipse through the backcountry with gear on their shoulders. Such stark challenges bring underlying emotional struggles to the forefront.

UPDATE: CLICK HERE for a YouTube video produced by Wildcat Films about the show.

Full cast and production staff members are listed on the WILDERNESS Information Page.