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<\/a>In the play, the professor\u2019s third marriage has just fallen apart, and he takes the audience through how he ended up in the relationship with the student.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe kind of takes us through step by step how he fell into this and his attempts to stop it, his failure to stop it,\u201d says Shamata. \u201cIt\u2019s a unique way of addressing… all the issues around relationships. It\u2019s not illegal, she\u2019s 19, but probably inappropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n
The play is unique in that the story is being told from the professor\u2019s point of view, not the student\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we usually hear more often the person who we might say is being taken advantage of, we usually get that point of view,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Shamata says that what makes this play interesting and complex for the audience is that it\u2019s set up so the audience likes the professor.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s very likeable, he shares a lot of the details of his life,\u201d says Shamata. \u201cHe\u2019s not a terrible human being, so it sets up a situation where we as an audience have to struggle with what we think about him… We like him but he\u2019s doing these things that he knows he should stop, but he doesn\u2019t stop. And so in a way we\u2019re kind of invited into it from what is going on in his head, so that we\u2019re not initially just looking at the fallout from it. We\u2019re looking at the way it started, the way that it continued. There are red flags along the way that he chooses to ignore or doesn\u2019t observe. So it\u2019s kind of easy to go, \u2018Okay, I understand why, I can kind of see why,\u2019 but nonetheless at a certain point we have to go, \u2018This is wrong.\u2019 And as much as we might, I don\u2019t know if I would say that we would identify with him, but we identify, I think, with a lot of the things that are happening in his life and I think we understand how he gets into it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shamata says that the play\u2019s complexity stems from the idea that good people can do bad things.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow could an intelligent, adult, experienced… how could he fall into this, how could he allow this to continue, how could he not take care of this young girl\u2019s emotions, and how could he be irresponsible?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Shamata feels that people who see the play will be thinking about it long after it ends.<\/p>\n \u201cAn audience on their way home from the theatre will be wrestling with… Although it\u2019s not particularly predatory on the surface and yet this young woman, in the end, has been treated in a way that should never have happened,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n