BHS Theatre Explores Personal and Societal Disasters with “By The Skin of Our Teeth”
The play featured absurd moments and fourth-wall breaks as it tackled the challenges of being human.
This past weekend, Buffalo High School’s Performing Arts Center lit up to debut the theater department’s spring play By The Skin Of Our Teeth. While the play might show a series of disasters, the production was not anything of the sort. This culminated in a truly unique and unconventional performance that stands out for its nontraditional style.
Through the combined efforts of the cast, crew, and tech department, By The Skin Of Our Teeth depicted a complex narrative, pushing the boundaries of what Buffalo High School students can achieve on the stage. The play follows a family that is always teetering between coming together and falling apart.
By The Skin Of Our Teeth bounces from millennium to millennium, showcasing numerous disasters: the Ice Age, Noah’s ark, the death of the dinosaurs, and even a World War are included as features. With all of these disasters, the production works to tie these events into one unified plot.
“This show has quite the combination,” director Deb Bestland said. “You go from act to act but it’s not in chronological order. It’s just one catastrophe after another.”
What made the show stand out was its stylistic commentary on both current and past events. The production creates scenes of characters breaking the fourth wall, the director needing to correct the show as it’s being performed, and the set breaking down in the opening scene; the show ultimately has its fair share of new ideas. Thornton Wilder wrote the play not only as a satire on the reception of his last play, but also as a look at the drive humans have to recover from every human disaster.
“I like to go back and see what was really beneficial. What people do over and over again because they had something in them that made other people resonate with their ideas. That’s kind of what was the impetus for what I chose,” Bestland said.
Whether it be intentional screw ups, fourth wall breaks, or meta commentary; This production shows humanity’s undying ability to persist, even if it is just by the skin of our teeth.
