Contrary to popular belief, professors do have lives beyond Gustavus. Doug Huff is a perfect example – a philosophy professor who spends his free time writing plays.
Two of his recent satirical works poking fun at Gustavus and the Saint Peter community will be performed at the Arts Center of Saint Peter this weekend.
On April 14 and 16, his newest play When All Else Fails makes its debut with a cast including Theatre Professor Henry MacCarthy.
The play follows a group of disparate community members that belong to a coffee club, where they drink anything but coffee, who have all come face-to-face with failure in some aspect of their lives. Desperate to make a change in their lives and succeed at something, they decide to rob a bank.
“These are the least qualified human beings you can imagine to rob a bank, it’s like if I were to rob a bank, it’d probably be a huge failure,” MacCarthy said.
“Comedy is supposed to give us an insight into the human condition that can’t be gotten any other way.” — Doug Huff
The play shines beyond its elements of farce and adventure though, with well-developed and genuine characters.
“What I think is really endearing about the play is the connection between these people. Even though they go through all of this, they still remain this group of people that care for each other,” MacCarthy said.
Huff based the play off of real-life events, conversations, and people in a coffee club in Saint Peter which he belongs to. Though he couldn’t imagine any of these people actually doing something so absurd, he uses the humor to make serious statements.
“Comedy is serious business, it’s supposed to give us an insight into the human condition that can’t be gotten any other way,” Huff, quoting Aristotle, said.
This comedic element and the connection to the Gustavus community run through both plays.
The other play will be performed on April 15 for the second time after its debut in 2009 with most of its original cast including current Religion Professor Sarah Ruble.
The National Endowment is a direct satire of Gustavus in the late 1970s when the college was offered a Humanities grant suggesting that they offer courses in clusters. In the story, the college takes the grant, but ends up using the money just to keep the college afloat and when the government comes to check in on them, chaos ensues.
“It’s a funny, lovingly mocking look at some of the insides of what happens in colleges. I think for students sometimes the college can just look like this big institution that sort of functions almost without human actors and all of a sudden, you realize that there are lots of people doing lots of different things and sometimes scrambling behind the scenes of all of this. Though, I don’t know whether that’s petrifying for students to realize or sort of charming to realize that, yeah, that’s how life works,” Ruble said.
While the play pokes fun at small liberal arts colleges and their quirks as well as the idiocies of academic life and some academic stereotypes, it also offers a critical look at reality.
“The serious theme underneath the play, the knock on American higher education, is that our students graduate knowing very little about a great deal. There’s a certain kind of institutional shallowness in our curriculum,” Huff said.
After receiving an undergraduate degree in English, Huff decided to pursue a career in philosophy and ended up merging both interests in his play writing. He wrote short stories as a young adult, but had no experience writing plays until he finished his first play at 39.
“I’ve never been happier in my life than when I am writing, whether it’s a play or philosophy,” Huff said. “You just find something that you’re clearly and totally convinced that you can do, even though you’ve never done it before in your life.”
Now, Huff has authored twelve plays, eight of which have won eight national or international awards for playwriting, and have been professionally staged here and abroad.
When All Else Fails and The National Endowment feature fast-paced and accessible comedy and a satirical look at Gustavus and the surrounding Saint Peter community, as well as elements of adventure and friendship.
Performances will be April 14-16 at 8 p.m. at the Arts Center of Saint Peter. Tickets for the performances are fifteen dollars can be found online at artscentersp.org. All of the proceeds from ticket sales will be donated to the Arts Center of Saint Peter.
“If you want to go and spend an evening laughing out loud, and who doesn’t want to do that, I think it would be really fun,” MacCarthy said.