THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF AMERICA (ABRIDGED)
Greenbrier Valley Theatre
The Patriotic Travesty by Adam Long, Reed Martin & Austin Tichenor
Directed by Mark Robinson
Photos by Gary Cooper
PROGRAM NOTES
1776, as everyone knows, was a seminal year for the United States. Independence was established. The Bill of rights was drafted. Dick Clark was born.
The year was eventful for another reason: one of our most-essential cultural institutions was instituted. The autumn of 1776 saw the creation of Cliff Notes. Dreamt-up by Benjamin Franklin's hyperactive third-cousin Sherwood Clifford Franklin - who suffered from attention-deficit disorder - Cliff Notes breathed new life into stuffy classics like The Iliad and Hamlet. These and other truly boring works of literature were encapsulated into bite-sized, ziplocked and ready-to-serve morsels that any culturally starved moron could digest in just one tasty sitting.
Sherwood's great bastion for illiteracy has continued into the 21st Century; turning out over 8,000 newly scrunched-up titles annually . . . popular favorites such as Shirley MacLaine's Next Life (an autobiography), Dr. Seuss's Horton the Elephant Visits the Valley of the Dolls, and the #1 bestseller Encyclopedia Brown in 'Nam. And now Cliff Notes has inspired us to bring you this evening's entertainment: 1,000 Years of American History, thoughtfully shoehorned into a mere 6 hours of pointless, sporadically-accurate drivel which we hope you will enjoy watching as much as we've enjoyed throwing it together. I encourage you to take tonight's stories and legends home with you to further mangle, travesty and share with your impressionable little ones.
- Mark Robinson