SCOTTY, BEAM SHATNER UP TO SEGERSTROM
Shatner: Another Frontier. Here, the octogenarian Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe winner makes his tour. Its one-year mission: To entertain trekkies and old souls, to shed light on the iconic career being Captain Kirk and the personal struggles he continues to grapple with as a man, to boldly sing and drop our jaws once more.
William Shatner’s one-man show beams its way down from the Music Box Theatre on Broadway to Segerstrom Hall in Orange County on January 17, 2012 at 7:30pm. For many like my father, it will be an opportunity to engage with the man who led the Starship Enterprise in vibrant color on their old tube television sets. A show set in the future aimed to satisfy the heads and hearts of young and old; with action-adventure, aliens, scientific ideas, philosophical questions, far-out sets and costumes, and a touch of the unknown and absurd. How fitting that Shatner comes full circle to star in a piece that covers similar territory with a nearly two-hour show.
My father introduced me to Star Trek in the summer when I was 9; we would watch three or four episodes a night after a long day of practicing baseball in the backyard. There’s a je ne sais quoi about Captain James T. Kirk: Brutal, yet loving; stubborn, yet diplomatic; handsome and strong, yet vulnerable. My father put it best when he delineated the difference between Shatner’s Kirk and all the other Star Trek Captains saying, “What made Shatner different was the fact that it always felt like it was his ship. Shatner owned his environment. The other Captains didn’t really own their environment the same way he did.” Shatner hosted and narrated a two-hour television special in 2006 called How William Shatner Changed the World, which chronicled how people’s lives were changed and how technology was developed because of the inspiration Star Trek served and continues to serve for these individuals. Now, he has come to the realization that not only has he changed the world, but that in actuality – he owns it.
While Shatner has enjoyed success with hundreds of other television shows – the most notable being The Twilight Zone, TJ Hooker, Columbo, and Boston Legal – but there is no doubt that people most recognize and appreciate William Shatner these days for being…William Shatner. As time goes by, Shatner, a natural raconteur, is more comfortable and embracing of his iconic status and celebrity; equal parts self-aware, self-deprecating, and self-aggrandizing. In the final analysis it’s his world – and we’re the ones who have the privilege to live in it.
photos by Joan Marcus
Shatner’s World: We Just Live In It
Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa
plays Thursday January 17, 2013 at 7:30pm
for tickets call (714) 556-2787 or visit http://www.SCFTA.org
for future tour dates and cities, visit http://shatnersworld.com/tour.html
