When most people define ‘fact,’ they say it is a hard truth that is absolutely provable, or “something that actually exists; reality; truth,” according to dictionary.com.

On March 3-6 in Karl C. Bruder Theatre, the Emporia State Theatre Department will be testing just how far a fact can be stretched in their production of “The Lifespan of a Fact” by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrel and Gordon Farrell.

“It brings a new light into how far you take a fact and you check the truth,” said Courtnee Wisdom, assistant director and senior fine arts major. “Because there’s certain things where you’re like this has to be this way but if I put it this way then I can get in trouble. So it’s just trying to understand what do you put as a fact and a full truth and what do you put as a half truth.”

The show follows three people, John D’Agata, played by Eddie Lee, Jim Fingal, played by Nicholas Thomas and Emily Penrose, played by Taylor Bisbee as they try to determine how much D’Agata can alter facts in order to have the creative freedom he feels he deserves while also trying to print the story in a magazine that follows journalistic rules.

This examination of portraying fact versus using creative freedom can be taken by audiences off the stage as well as in the show.

“I think the message would be that everything has a gray area,” said Eddie Lee, the actor playing John D’Agata and junior theater major. “Nothing is always perfect if it’s cemented in facts, but in the same way, being creative and changing details for the sake of a story isn’t always a positive thing either. There’s a lot of gray area and I think that can be applied in all facets of life.”

While the act of studying whether a fact is truly correct or not may not sound interesting to all, the show uses comedy throughout to portray its deeper message.

“It sounds like a boring drama around a suicide culture and clash of creative liberty, in fact, but what’s very interesting is tha tit draws the audience in because it’s hysterical,” said Jim Harris, director of the show and assistant professor of communication and theatre.

At the end of the day, the show is the story of how two people battle over grammar and their personal beliefs of where creativity falls in the journalism world.

“I feel like a lot of the humor comes from the fact that these are two people who are trying to get the other person to understand why they’re doing what they do and the other people just have no idea how to even start to think like that,” Lee said.

While the show is “ludicrously funny,” in the portrayal of the incidents, the subject the men are arguing about is a “violent clash over prepositions,” according to Harris.

“It makes the audience think,” said Harris. “And that’s what I want it to do, to have an enjoyable, fun filled, laughter filled ride. But in the end, ultimately, it’s dealing with relatively heavy themes and I like that about this and I think it’s a piece that, while you enjoy yourself, it will leave you thinking, hopefully for weeks after you’ve seen it.”

One of the ways the characters and their personalities are introduced in the show is through a series of emails that will be showing what the characters are saying for the audience to read as they are being “typed.”

ESU has not done anything with projections like this in recent memory, according to Wisdom, the person typing the emails and creating the video that will play throughout the show.

Lee said he is excited to work with the emails and it adds a challenge to acting by making the actors time what they say to match the projection.

While timing on screen video emails is a challenge for the actors, it’s not the only battle the cast and crew have had to fight.

“We had originally prepared to do a play called “Good People” and we all had been working on that for several months before the process,” Harris said. “But we had some casting issues due to lots of complications including COVID, and we had to pivot to this one pretty quickly and so we pivoted to “The Lifespan of a Fact.” And so the normal preparation that happens months before a show were lost because we didn’t know we were gonna do this and all of a sudden we’re doing “Lifespan of a Fact” and it’s a play I had read once.”

While the change in scheduling was hard to grasp and feel comfortable with in the beginning, Pete Rydberg, associate professor of communication and theatre, said they could do it and “show everyone that we are able to produce really good art and we’ll do it however in the world we have to,” according to Harris.

In addition to having only about four weeks to prepare for the show, ESU was closed for two different days due to winter weather.

While the premise of the story D’Agata is writing starts with the suicide of a young boy, the show is not ultimately about that, although discussing the subject may be triggering for some audiences.

“We’ve thought about that,” Harris said. “And while the ultimate route of where this came from was a 16-year-old’s death by suicide, the play is not about suicide at all. Although it is discussed, why would a boy commit suicide and that’s kind of the centerpiece of why John wrote the article to begin with and so if audiences are experiencing or could be triggered by discussion of suicide then that is one concern, but ultimately the play is not about that. It’s really about the discussion between creative license and fact.”

If you or someone you know is struggling, please text CNQR to 741-741 or call 1-800-273-8255. Additional resources can be found at the ESU Counseling Center, available at 620-341-5222.

The show will be open to the public at 7:30 p.m. March 3-5 and 2 p.m. March 6 in Karl C. Bruder Theatre and tickets are free for all ESU students.

“I’m just most excited to have a live audience for reactions,” Lee said. “Because we have our little group, our directors and our stage managers and they’ll laugh at jokes here and there and make remarks there but having the live audience, you never know, they might not laugh at anything that we thought was funny, they might laugh at things that we thought were completely serious, and I think the experience of that is always just the best part to look forward to.”