Fire On The Mountain

Fire on the Mountain

Fire on the Mountain is a play that depicts the lives of Appalachian coal miners told through the music of Bluegrass. The actors played the music themselves who also acted in small skits portraying a documentary type feel to the stage. Each actor had a character whose life was somehow effected by coal mining, and each had the chance to show the audience a little bit of their life.

This play had a set of two projector screens that photo-looped with different effecting pictures of coal miners, the family of them, children working, etcÐ'... Behind those were the horizon on the one side-also portraying a living room area, and on the other side were scrap metal-leading into what seemed like a coal mine. In the middle of the set, were all of the characters sitting on their pedestals by their own music entity that caressed the flow of the play.

The play talked about many contradictory subjects of its time. Such as Child labor, racial equality, unionizing-strikes, black of benefits, the black lung, class discrimination, strip mining, environmental destruction, unemployment, and who could forget those tragic coal miners who were trapped and killed in the mines after a freak accident. Daily life was how the play flowed, no middle, no end. Just started talking about daily life and started from there.

The play was obviously a musical with singing, dancing, lots of monologues, and small scenes with each character that had an actual speaking part.

The lighting was very well rehearsed which is no great surprise since the Repertory has always had interesting little fixes that only the actors eye can see. But lighting was almost an extra character in this play. It was more pronounced by making a scene all happy one minute and then completely serious and tragic the next.

The acting was fitting for the situations given. The only way for the play to have come together was for every scene/musical interlude to fit perfectly together like a puzzle. The switch from sad to happy to serious was almost instinct.

The attire was very informal with specks of casual. No festival seating, tickets had seat number on them making it easier and more organized. Intermission was not an option for this play, which honestly was s a good move. Given to the audience besides the ticket stub was a program. A highly important book of information that is read through atleast once before the play actually begins. The audience was 50+ and the race was mostly white with college education or more. The upper-class/liberal community came out in he audience that night.

The make-up of the play didn't really