The Bronx is burning. The moon is hiding. Certain fruits can only be bought on the black market. Credit card debt equals torture. Crime plagues the earth. A heavenly battle is underway – and Marisol Perez is witnessing it all first hand.

Starting tonight and running through Nov. 4, Barber Theatre (30 Arts Circle Dr.) will become an apocalyptic war zone. The fall main stage is Marisol, a play written by Jose Rivera, the award-winning playwright and screenwriter who is responsible for the 2004 film based on Che Guevara’s youth, The Motorcycle Diaries.

Directed by David Kesnar of Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre Company and staring some of Northwestern’s best, the play tells the story of a woman stuck between her belief in the unseen and the truth of a very tangible here and now.

The main character Marisol, a young middle-class Puerto Rican woman, is living in the end of times. She sleeps with a rosary and a picture of Jesus next to her bed along with a bottle of liquor on the nightstand and a knife under her pillow.

Somehow she has found a way to cope with ills around her and maintain a sense of security amid calamity. But when her guardian angel leaves to take up arms in the war against a senile God, the option to fight on the side of the angels does not seem like much of an option at all. At this point, everything Marisol thought she knew comes into question.

“It is a play about a young woman trying to find herself in a world that is literally falling apart,” says assistant stage manager Jenn Walsh, a Communication junior. “The play is very violent, but [it] touches on very human issues.”

A graphic depiction of a world abandoned by the angels to fight against God, the play questions where the line between a person’s faith in their god and personal action and agency is, or where it should be drawn. And unlike many tells of the end, the story is built on human emotion and possibilities and leaves out the futuristic robots and descriptions of a world ruled by technology.

“It’s very different from what’s been seen on Northwestern’s main stage,” says Aurelia Clunie, a Communication senior who plays Marisol’s angel.

While the idea of going to war with God because he is not doing his job may make some people uncomfortable, Clunie offers her interpretation on why the war is understandable.

“The play is not [about] going to war with God as love, but going to war with an old sense of God,” she says.

The play’s elements include bags of trash, chaotic transitions, people getting shot on stage, loud explosions at every turn and visuals of angels with wings of deteriorating flesh. To bring a work so complex to the stage and make it accessible, there was a lot of work that went into the reading of the script.

Before actually rehearsing the piece, the ensemble sat down with the director to talk and work through the plays many layers discussing different interpretations.

“When I read the script I was really excited about it,” Walsh says. “It pulls the readers in almost immediately. It’s and incredible show and it tells an amazing story.”

It is the story, combined with striking visuals and a unique message, that makes Marisol stand out as a play that makes audiences think.

“The play is a reminder that we are still doing theatre that does more than entertain,” Clunie says, “The audience should expect to be shaken in their sense of what is true and what is recognizable.”

Medill senior Niema Jordan is a PLAY writer. She can be reached at [email protected].