Colorado College student explores aftermath of Waldo Canyon fire in new play
What happened in the fire's aftermath is the basis of the junior's play "Allison After a Fire." It runs Thursday and Friday in
"It's meditative," said Dinneen, who directs and also stars in the play, "almost like a poem. It's quiet and nostalgic. There's not a lot of action or violent drama."
The show features a young couple, Allison and Colton, who find themselves in post-fire purgatory after their Mountain Shadows home has burned down. They're stuck in temporary housing as they wait for an insurance claim to come through and decipher what to do in the meantime.
As Dinneen, a philosophy and history major, researched the play he discovered another victim of the flames -- the endangered Mexican spotted owl, a species that relied on the old growth trees in
Before the fire Allison worked with her father in a place called The Refuge, where the pair rescued and rehabilitated owls before releasing them back into the wild. In the wake of the ruin she struggles with the loss of that relationship with her father, the owls and the forest.
"The coverage of the fire was about the destruction of human property and people's lives," Dinneen said, "but what the owls have done is bring out the natural aspect."
The play quotes a former
"You see the conception of fire as a monster, as this terrible destructive force that needs killing," said Dinneen. "In reality forest fires are natural processes, which restore the vibrancy of a forest and the vitality. They burn out the underbrush, re-fertilize the soil and cause new things to grow. It's a positive natural thing."
The playwright hopes to spark interest in building a bridge between the two schools of thought and engender a healthier relationship between humans and nature.
"How can we understand fire as maybe something good?" he said. "And a forest not as something that doesn't have a monster inside, but as something that is a beautiful place full of opportunity for humans to connect with nature?"
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