Crippled by Idolatry
by Élaine Charlebois
In his one-man show, Keir Cutler takes on the role of a professor whose obsession with William Shakespeare consumes his ability to teach a coherent class. Throughout the piece, Cutler moves swiftly from teaching insightful literary theory to subjecting the class to his utterly incomprehensible tangents. In an instance where the professor reads aloud the supposedly anonymous teacher evaluations which highlight his lack of organization, his inability to get through the Shakespearean scene assigned for that day’s course, and his overall ineptitude as an educator, the audience soon discovers that this professor is in fact progressively becoming unhinged. One example is the character’s attempt to guilt-trip his students by suggesting that their comments compromised his shot at tenure and ruined his marriage.
