By Melonie Magruder
Lookout Staff

September 7, 2011 -- Santa Monica College is known for its commitment to global citizenship, and its Public Information Officer, G. Bruce Smith, has taken the college's ideals to heart.

Smith is so invested in SMC's Global Citizenship Initiative that he has written a play that speaks to the soul of such politics of conscience, framing the global calamity of climate change in the reality of human suffering. Next week, the college will present a staged reading of his “After Us the Savage God,” free to the public.

Savage cast. Photo by Melonie Magruder

In staging this play, Smith – a long-time member of Los Angeles’ theatre community and an award-winning playwright – was able to combine elements dear to his heart: alarm at the rising human toll of the effects of global warming, an opportunity to contribute further to SMC’s program that galvanizes students to community action, and gut-twisting drama that shakes you up and leaves the audience thinking long after the applause has died.

The play had organic inspiration.

“One of the themes adopted by SMC’s Global Citizenship Council last year concerned water,” Smith said in discussing his play. “I happened to be reading at that time about the drought in Australia and how it was just devastating farmers. Some of them committed suicide as they watched their life’s work just dry up and blow away. It really got me to thinking. And I ended up writing the play in about five weeks.”

“After Us the Savage God” tells a searing story of what happens to a farming family facing the loss of their father and devastating financial ruin brought on by drought caused by climate change. Young Matt Carter is struggling with his father’s recent suicide and keeping his emotionally fragile sister stable, while dealing with the financial realities brought to the family farm by drought. A local mayor (and housing developer) might offer hope, but at unthinkable cost to the Carter family.

The play has already won an honorable mention from the Ohio State Newark New Play Contest and was a finalist in this year’s HRC Showcase Theatre in New York.

Smith said the themes of environmental distress and human frailty fit right in with what Santa Monica College's Global Citizenship Initiative is trying to create.

“There is a very active student body on the SMC campus working on environmental awareness and pushing an educational mission in very creative ways,” Smith said. “The availability of drinkable water to a huge global community is going to be a very severe challenge within this century. But if you illustrate this concern with the toll it takes on our people, well, it makes for some pretty intense drama.”

Smith grew up traveling all over the world. His father was in the diplomatic corps and he passed his childhood in India, Turkey, Ethiopia and Cyprus. So his worldview is shaped by a more global context than most.

He landed in Los Angeles and worked for several years as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Daily News, among other publications. But that didn’t stop him from grinding out more than 20 plays and screenplays (“A labor of love,” Smith said dryly. “I made more money on one story published in the L.A. Times than in a six-week run of one of my plays.”), which have received a raft of awards from national play festivals. Local runs of his plays have garnered Critics’ Picks and rave reviews.

Smith tapped director Andre Barron to stage this reading for Santa Monica College. Barron, a local director who worked with Smith on past projects, in turn rounded up a formidable cast, including Robert Ray Shafer (of NBC’s “The Office”), Logan Fahey, Audrey Corsa and Jeff Harlan. He said that “After Us the Savage God” is less an environmental polemic than a character study with wonderful language.

“This play is about relationships,” Barron said. “It’s about a son in terrible circumstances and his journey to becoming the man of the house. Matt is torn between duty and a dream. His adversary, the mayor, is not just your typical bad guy. There’s huge complexity in the characters and their relationships and that’s what makes this a really great piece of theatre.”

Barron was initially impressed with how quickly Smith wrote the play and then, with how powerfully it hit him emotionally.

“There’s definitely a David and Goliath here,” Barron said. “But at heart, it’s realness lies in what happens to ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.”

Smith said that he is not surprised how the issue of climate change has become such a political football.

“It boils down to corporate greed, of course,” he said. “But my aim with this play was to show its impact on just one family.”

“After Us the Savage God” will be staged September 16 at 8:00 p.m. at the Theatre Arts Studio Stage on the main SMC campus, 1900 Pico Blvd. The reading is free and seating is on a first-arrival basis. Ample free parking is available on Friday evenings. A discussion with playwright and cast, and a reception with food and refreshments, follow the reading. For more information, call (310) 434-4209.