In today’s college environment, you often find students who go against the grain, to find themselves and what they stand for.
They are called hipsters.
Hipsters can be distinguished as those who aren’t “mainstream” by their resistance to follow trends, active choice to wear glasses that are too big, flower-child style, nonstop ‘20s music by artists you have never heard of and disinterest in major superheroes.
Now cases of “hipsteritis” may vary, but everyone knows who they are, except the hipsters.
“Mainstream,” directed by sophomore social work major, Leah Johnson, explores the world of hipsters and the effects of changing your values to be something you are not. The play was written by Conor Grey, a Gannon alumnus attending Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine – LECOM. Grey said “Mainstream” is pretty much a snapshot of the millennial college student.
“At its core, it’s really a story about the moral implications of changing oneself to fit into another person’s ideals. Though, one could also say it’s just a show about hipsters, philosophy and college life in general.”
Although the show was written about Grey`s experience between college and medical school, the show offers insight directed at all ages. This gives the show a more meaningful lesson and story with its humor.
The show not only is about the hipster, but it uses philosophical and dirty humor to make fun of the hipster in a way that would make even a hipster laugh.
Mary Stephens, a junior occupational therapy major plays the character Jeff in the production.
“It`s a really funny show, because it is completely poking fun at this emerging class of people who call themselves hipsters,” Stephens said.
What makes the humor so relevant to the audience is that the conversations that happen onstage are conversations that could happen in real life – and did, according to Grey.
Grey said he wrote 70 percent of the show’s dialect based on actual conversations he had with people over the course of college and before med school. But, the real part of the show isn’t the humor or the hipsters that those of us born after 1985 run into on a daily basis.
The most realistic part of the show is the message. “The show teaches you have to stick to who you are as a person, and you shouldn’t try and change yourself,” Stephens said.
Whether it be in college or the time after, this is the truest message of them all and the hardest to get across. That is what makes the show the most relatable, for all audience members, no matter age.
“It’s a new piece of theater and it ties in with the current generation’s identity crisis, so hopefully it’ll give people some insight into who they are and who they want to be,” Grey said.
“Mainstream” will be playing at 8 p.m. Thursday on the second floor of the Schuster Theater as a part of Fringe Fest Erie 2015. Tickets are $5 and can be purchased at the door.
ALIZABETH LENG
