UVSC student takes director’s chair

Live entertainment holds something you just can’t get from canned media. In live entertainment, there’s an energetic bond forged between audience member and entertainer that doesn’t exist in a movie or TV show, and student director Jake Suazo shows that he sure knows how to use it in his latest directorial effort George Washington Slept Here.

George Washington. is a delightful little comedy about a family that gets swindled into buying a beat-up, rustic old countryside home in which George Washington supposedly slept. While adjusting to being out of the city, the family learns the hard way that it’s not an easy or cheap lifestyle.

Before long, with bills stacking and the bank threatening, from selling valuables to schmoozing rich relatives, this broke family is looking for any way to avoid foreclosure. And all along the way there are other little obstacles working against them.

Not only is George Washington. directed by a fellow Wolverine, but it stars a UVSC student and alumnus. This fantastic cast has the ability to instantaneously begin the show with all cylinders running on full speed, making the transition from being in real life to watching a live show easy, comfortable, painless and natural. Suazo says he went into the project thinking of people he knew that could play the roles. "I cast a lot of friends."

The Springville Playhouse is the perfect venue for George Washington. The small intimate setting brings the action right to you and the house management consists of the warmest and friendliest staff you’ll ever meet. "I enjoyed doing this in the Springville Playhouse. It’s a casual, do-it-yourself theatre. I got to do what I wanted."

George Washington Slept Here is a fun piece of American pie. It is a pure, family appropriate piece of quality entertainment. Though the story is average, the production is not. It’s not the content of the play that makes it worthwhile, it’s the production.

If you see George Washington and like what you see, then know that Suazo is the founder and star of the Thrillionaires improv comedy troupe performing weekly out of the Covey Center for Arts in Provo. Or vice versa. If you seen Thrillionaires, and you like it, see George Washington If you’ve ever attended one of Thrillionaires improv comedy shows, then you’ve witnessed and fed to that bond that Suazo has mastered between audience and entertainer.