One of the greatest things about university life is the opportunity to explore and create beyond the classroom.
Eastern Michigan University students Craig Draheim, Jared Stroup, Kelsea Kerkes and Dan Johnson have taken the opportunity and run with it by orchestrating the development of a local satire-acting group they have named Sad Tire Theatre. All four are the board members for the group and work together to write the scripts for their plays.
Development of the group started in late May, but open showings began in September. Each month of showings will have a differing theme of end-of-the-world and natural disaster stories told by psychiatric patients in a clinic, brought together by their interactions with four reoccurring characters that work in the fictional setting of Theodore G. Hobson’s Assessment Clinic.
“I’ve always felt that it’s easier to promote a message through humor than it is with chilling, horrifying events” Draheim said. “There’re so many things we are afraid of. Our goal is to satirize these events in a tastefully done way. We don’t just want to
poke fun at a tragic event. We want to bring them to light.”
The comedy of Sad Tire stems from the four main characters and how they probably shouldn’t be entrusted to work at the clinic. There’s the boss, Arthur Burnette (played by Draheim), who is an accountant with no history in psychiatrics and doesn’t know when to stop talking when he knows he’s wrong. Deadpan receptionist Clifford Jones (Johnson) watches all, and two therapists – the dimwitted and vain William Amadeus (Daniel Millhouse) and the almost clichéd, coldly clinical Eeva Strauss (Kerkes).
Last month’s Halloween theme for the play on the eve of the 29th was a collection of stories ranging from a bus crash to a zombie apocalypse. November’s theme is epidemics. December will be taken off, but January will follow up with the classic end-of-the-world theme to close out the year.
Seasonal themes are common as well since February will showcase blizzards, March is flooding, April is dictators/government, June is tornadoes, July is heat waves and August is hurricanes.
Sad Tire Theatres operates locally with its venues primarily located at the Mix Studio Theatre in downtown Ypsilanti on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Washington. Entrance fee is $5 per showing with one showing a month during the third or fourth week of the month.
Show times and information can be found on the Sad Tire Theatre Facebook page or its Twitter page. For readers interested in joining the acting cast, directing a production or in submitting their own satire script to the board members, resumes and submissions can be made to weneedhelp@sadtiretheatre.com.
