I took a little trip over to Next Act Theatre's Off-Broadway Theatre (located on the second floor of the white building across from the Milwaukee Public Market on Water Street) to get a glimpse into "Paradise" last night.

Next Act Theatre has a built its reputation on producing plays that get people talking and thinking, and I would agree that "Paradise" was successful in that role. In fact, I was still thinking about the play when I read the in the newspaper this morning about four back-to-back explosions that went off at two, crowed marketplaces in Baghdad on Monday. I have gotten to the point where I have started to almost block this kind of news out, but today I actually paused to consider all the people whose lives must have been changed forever because of those explosions.

Of course, if you live in the Middle East in the midst of where the fighting is happening, it is impossible to block it out. The play clearly demonstrates that the closer the characters got to the fighting, the more personally involved they became, and the more impossible it became to choose peace. The play did a good job of making the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more real to me and brought me more understanding of how people's minds are closed through their painful life experiences. Hope is gradually worn away, hate takes over, and people turn their sorrow into actions which cause more sorrow. Add money and family honor into the mix, and peace becomes a lost cause. The question is how this trend can be reversed.

"Paradise" is a dream, as well as an opportunity to see a play that will set your wheels turning. It runs until Feb. 25 at the Off-Broadway Theatre.