The stage opens with a flower girl in what seems to be a peaceful acid trance, dancing and waving her arms, before being serenaded by a piper. This is a recurring motif throughout the play referencing Pink Floyd’s album, “The Piper At the Gates of Dawn,” and original bandleader Syd Barrett.
“At its core, the play is really looking at the values of society in the Western world and the values of society in the Communist world during the Cold War,” said Joseph Gilg, the play’s director and an instructor of acting and directing in the theater arts department. “And on the one hand in America, Great Britain and all over Western Europe you were taught that communism was evil, communism was bad and that sort of thing, and of course you can you see that in the play in how people are treated.”
“Rock ‘n’ Roll” is set in both Cambridge, England and in Prague, Czechoslovakia between August 1968 and the summer 1990 -— two periods of revolution in Prague; the first being the Prague Spring in 1968, the latter being the Velvet Revolution in 1989.
We follow the character of Jan, a young and aspiring student who has just finished his first term at Cambridge University and is returning to his home in Prague. Upon coming home to Prague, Jan is confronted with the realities of communism that people in England speak of so ideally and fondly. He’s constantly interrogated by the police; his records and albums are confiscated; and the articles he writes have to be censored. Jan is juxtaposed by former confidant Max, a Cambridge professor and outspoken Marxist who sees communism as an ideal form of society, yet lives in comfortable, capitalistic Cambridge — safe from the realities of hegemonic communist dictatorships.
“For me, the whole thing about the show is what rock ‘n’ roll is to Jan, communism and politics is for Max and he’s kind of in his — not-quite-fat Elvis phase — but kind of getting there,” said Russell Dyball, a senior theater arts major who plays Max.
Max holds on to his ideals and ideology throughout the entirety of his life, kicking and screaming until the end. Dyball’s rendition is flawless as he impersonates the pompous British ideologue, expressing all the necessary affectation one would expect.
The play takes multiple complex turns and loops as relationships are strained, new characters are introduced and things go sour. Jan finds himself in the midst of internal struggles and in the middle of a battle whose side is hard to choose.
“Jan’s big conflict, aside from the political conflict going on between him and Ferdinand, is that he was spying on Max for a summer term in Cambridge,” said Dylan Gutridge, who plays Jan. “He started to view him as a father figure, because his father was killed in World War II and he really didn’t have anybody, so he kind of latched on to Max.”
Moreover, “Rock ‘n’ Roll” raises issues that can relate to our times and are more than appropriate in the context of Eugene. The play espouses the belief that music can be a mechanism for social justice and change and that it’s also not just something from a bygone era, but something that can still be applied today.
“I think that there’s still that element that can be done with music because music is so powerful and so emotional, and you see all kinds of rioters and bands who use it to push a message or espouse a particular point of view, and I think that will always be true,” Gilg said.