Actress gives area's best performance of season

People can be excused for not wanting to see a play about hatred and the horrors of war.

After all, aren't we facing enough problems these days?

But they'd be missing out on a truly transformative experience.
For "Signature," the one-woman show currently playing at the Manitou Art Theater, features the single best dramatic performance in the Pikes Peak region so far this season.

And if it seems to offer little hope for peace, it does show, in the most powerful way possible, just what it means to be human.

Denver actress Rebecca Buric based her harrowing piece on stories of her family in Croatia, a land where people can't remember what it was like before the war because they've never been without one.

Introduced to us as a romantic young girl, Buric's character of Aida grows up toughened, but never hardened, by the violence around her.

She becomes a schoolteacher, and we witness her burgeoning inner strength when one of her students turns a drawing of a circle into a target - centered on a faceless figure.

"Who is it?" Aida asks, forcing the child to confront his own prejudices. "A man? A woman? A boy? A girl?"

"The enemy," comes the answer.

Aida looks the child firmly in the eye. "There is no enemy ... in my classroom."

For the hour and 10 minutes of the play, Buric rides a roller coaster of emotions. She is, in turn, joyous, terrified, angry, playful, frantic.

But most of all, she is human - with all the frailties and flaws that implies.

I would have liked to have seen more stories about Aida's husband, for I never felt like I knew him as well as the other characters in her life.

And the play begs for a stronger title. The current nondescript title doesn't do justice to the passion and poignancy of the work.

But these are quibbles.

In Aida's view, the true heroes aren't those who take up arms against an undefined enemy, but those who simply manage to survive.

May we all be such heroes.

Signature - a one-woman drama

When: 8 p.m. today, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday

Where: The Manitou Art Theater, 1367 Pecan St.

Tickets: $18; 685-4729 or themat.org