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John Severson

Senior Max Moen plays Every(man).

No one in the audience could escape the discomfort of an all too familiar existential crisis: when faced with mortality, was one moral enough in their life?

The play follows the character Every(man), a representation of the modern, average human: focused on money, surrounded by fake friends, and under the impression that they are in their prime. However, Every(man) is paid a visit by Death, and oily, bitter character, who tells Every(man) that they must travel to God and deliver a reckoning of their morality before they die. Every(man) struggles to find any good deeds they have done, and spends most of the play trying to find a way to stump death.

Throughout the play, Every(man), played by seniors Max Moen and Elise Parsons, comes across personified tropes of the human experience. Materialism ( senior Rachael Johnson) comes in the form of a drag queen, who breaks the news to Every(man) that their wealth amounts to nothing in the afterlife. Good Deeds (senior Gemma Yoo) appears covered in trash,  delivers the chilling message that it is too late for human kind to fix what they have caused; a message that reverberates the heartbreaking truth about the state of our planet today.

Traditionally, the character of Every(man) is played by one person, usually male-identified. The artistic choice for this production was to make Every(man) two different actors. Having the difference not only brings light to the inclusions of two different gender identities, but emphasizes the characters aim to be the average human. However, the difference in acting styles and physical appearance between Parsons and Moen was blended together beautifully with seamless transitions throughout each scene, as they took up where the other left off.