Working at a movie theater is the definition of “hurry up and wait.” You hustle to sell tickets and popcorn, you get everyone in their seats, and then you have two hours of downtime. What happens in the long spaces between movies? The Flick is a Pulitzer-winning play about just that. With only three characters, all of them working at an outdated one-screen movie theater, the play covers idle chatter, dance-offs, romantic pursuits, brash confessions, tête-à-têtes, and an ongoing game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
I saw The Flick when it was at Shotgun Players in Berkeley last year, and it wasn’t perfect, but having firsthand knowledge of the tedium and drudgery of movie theater employment, I can say that it got a lot of things right. Enough so that I’m excited to see it in the hands of Left Edge Theater company in Santa Rosa, a small company with a big reputation for excellence. If you’ve ever worked at a movie theater, or really any job working with the public, I fully recommend it. It runs March 6-29 at Left Edge Theater, in the Luther Burbank Center in Santa Rosa.—Gabe Meline
