GOOD BOYS AND TRUE Set for UofSC Lab Theatre Tonight

In Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's provocative play, we meet Brandon Hardy, who leads a charmed life as the popular star student at a prestigious Washington, DC prep school. However, his privileged life threatens to collapse when a disturbing videotape is found on campus. As the resulting scandal takes unexpected turns, Brandon's mother, Elizabeth, must sort out fact from fiction and confront unsettling truths about her son, herself, and their life. Good Boys and True contains adult language, including a graphic description of a sexual assault, and is not suitable for children.

Director David Britt says the story is ultimately about the extreme lengths to which a person will go to keep a dark secret, and serves as a cautionary tale in a society that's losing the sense of individual privacy.

"The central character is eighteen years old, an age when I think we make a lot of foolish decisions and don't know what the consequences of those decisions will be," he explains. "The play is set in 1997, before the spread of internet video, so it throws back to a time when we probably foolishly felt safer, most negative consequences to our actions would be short lived. But, in the modern age of Facebook and YouTube and cameras on every phone, the play reminds us that we may be even less safe now."

The director also thinks that despite the scandalous nature of the plot, the relationships and events depicted in the play are still relatable to anyone. "Every night after rehearsal," he says, "the cast and I can talk for hours about our lives and things going on in the world. We walk out knowing we have a lot more in common than we don't."

Britt has assembled a top-notch cast of students, alumni and a guest actor to bring the story to life. University alum Tapp Hallman (BA, Media Arts) plays Brandon, while another alum, Stephen Canada (BA, Theatre) is cast as his openly gay friend Justin. Yolanda Cooper, a foreign exchange student from England, plays Brandon's mother. Rounding out the cast are undergraduate students Megan Branham and Brooke Smith, and guest actor Lee Williams.

"It's another David Britt play," the director says with a chuckle, "about sticky subjects and things that may make people uncomfortable."

He adds, "But like the cast at rehearsals, the audience will walk out knowing how similar we all are. To me that's why we do theatre - to help people find out where they live in the story, and see that, no matter what, their life is normal and worthy of being shared."

GOOD BOYS AND TRUE will be performed today, October 9-12. Show times are 8pm nightly. Tickets are $5 each, and available only at the door. The USC Lab Theatre is located at 1400 Wheat St, in the Booker T. Washington Building. Audiences are advised to arrive early, as seating is limited.