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Arts & Entertainment

Voices from Jonestown: "People's Temple" Holds Final Performances at NVC

Napa Valley College Conservatory Theater's gripping production of "The People's Temple," starring Barry Martin and Donald E. Lacy, Jr., closes Sunday.

Jim Jones attracted people from all walks of life to his church, offering its members a world “full of love” and free of capitalism and hate.

Yet in 1978, 909 people died in his Guyana settlement, Jonestown, and five more were murdered at a nearby airstrip by Jones followers.

, now in its final performances at , is a gripping theater piece by Leigh Fondakowski, part of the team that created The Laramie Project.

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Like that earlier work, is composed entirely from actual statements, in this case the recorded words of the people who suffered and died following Jones’ promise of utopia--including Jones himself.

As each person steps forward in the hushed theater space and begins to speak, the audience comes to see the Jonestown members not as crazy religious followers but as individuals, many of them African-American, who really wanted a better life.

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In the central role of Jim Jones, Napa actor Barry Martin brilliantly portrays the charismatic preacher as a monster with a deeply human flaw: as Jones' son -- also played by Martin -- puts it, "He was addicted to adulation."

The play's cast also includes award-winning TV and film actor and longtime San Francisco radio personality Donald E. Lacy, Jr.

Directed by Jennifer King, artistic director of Napa Valley Conservatory Theater,  the play transports the audience without the use of elaborate scenery. Instead, the lighting and acoustics focus attention directly on the narrative.

One by one, the stories spill out in chronological order. The space becomes intimate as actors talk directly to the audience, bringing us directly into the chaos of the experience with the realization that this could have happened to anyone.

Audiences will leave with deep in thoughts of humanity, conformity and the individuals of the People’s Temple.

"Art should always make messy what we think we know," said NVC professor Amanda Badgett, after the opening-night performance last week.

"I went in (Friday night) thinking I knew ‘the story’; I came out with less certainty and a much greater appreciation of the complexity of this event,” she said.

The People’s Temple holds its final performances Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center at Napa Valley College, 2277 Napa-Vallejo Highway in Napa. Tickets are $20 general, $15 senior/student/military: (707) 256-7510, http://www.napavalleytheater.org

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