By Tim Moore\/Thingamajig Theatre Company<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a particular pleasure in watching two strong actors circle each other onstage, armed only with words, conviction and just enough vulnerability to make the audience lean forward.<\/p>\n
That pleasure is at the heart of \u201cBakersfield Mist,\u201d opening Friday, Feb. 20, at the Pagosa Springs Center for the Arts and running through March 14.<\/p>\n
Stephen Sachs\u2019s two-character play, inspired by a true story, begins with a simple question: What if a thrift store painting might be worth millions? The real subject, however, is not the object under scrutiny. It is the people doing the looking.<\/p>\n
Karisa Bruin\u2019s Maude Gutman is sharp-tongued, wounded, funny and defiantly unpolished. Living in a modest trailer in Bakersfield, she believes she may have stumbled upon a lost Jackson Pollock. Bruin grounds the character in humor, stubborn pride and flashes of surprising vulnerability.<\/p>\n
Opposite her, Dennis Elkins plays Lionel Percy, a cultured New York art expert brought in to evaluate the painting. Elkins gives Lionel a quiet precision that gradually reveals something far more human beneath the professional certainty. Watching Lionel\u2019s confidence erode, and Maude\u2019s emotional armor crack, becomes the evening\u2019s quiet thrill.<\/p>\n
Directed by Christina Norris, the production leans into the play\u2019s central tension between expertise and instinct, refinement and survival, authority and lived experience. Humor arrives easily, but the story lingers because of the questions it raises about class, taste and who gets to decide what is valuable.<\/p>\n
Premiering at Los Angeles\u2019s Fountain Theatre in 2011 before moving to the Kirk Douglas Theatre, \u201cBakersfield Mist\u201d earned a reputation for emotional immediacy and accessible intelligence. Those qualities shine in this intimate, actor-driven production.<\/p>\n
\u201cBakersfield Mist\u201d will open Friday, Feb. 20, and run through March 14 at the Pagosa Springs Center for the Arts. Ticket information is available at pagosacenter.org or by calling the box office at (970) 731-SHOW (7469).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Tim Moore\/Thingamajig Theatre Company There\u2019s a particular pleasure in watching two strong actors circle each other onstage,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[87658,151,153,152,551,87659],"class_list":["post-186073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-archuleta-county","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news","tag-colorado","tag-pagosa-springs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}