Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre kicks off their 25th season with a play by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Gordon Farrell about the nature of honesty in art and objective truth in information. In The Lifespan of a Fact, a writer and a fact-checker clash when they cannot agree on the veracity of statements made in a major piece of writing before it is published.
“Are facts and truth negotiable? And do facts necessarily tell the truth?” asks director Simon Levy. “Specifically, in literary nonfiction, does the author have the right, the authority, to change the facts to make it a better story?”
The writer in the center of this conflict (played by Ron Bottitta) is aiming for greatness as an American essayist. “He believes in the singular beauty of the written word, and he doesn’t suffer fools,” says Bottitta. “He’s challenged by the fact that fewer and fewer people get him, and he suspects that his time has passed.” His newest work has the potential to bolster a floundering publication, but it reaches an impasse when it crosses the desk of an editorial adversary: an ambitious young fact-checker.