Was it coincidence or one of those fated moments when the ironies of life align and bring things into perspective?

Two hours before the opening show of “The Grapes of Wrath” at Spotlight theater, I entered Metro Galleries half a block away for another opening – “Latination,” featuring artwork inspired by Latino heritage. I paused to study Larry Jason’s rendition of the iconic image of Dolores Huerta in her young adulthood, strongly holding up a sign that read “Huelga,” or “Strike” in Spanish.

Then I continued through the gallery and came upon Dolores Huerta herself, talking to a small group of guests at the show. As co-founder with Cesar

Chavez of the National Farm Workers Association (which later became United Farm Workers, or UFW), Huerta helped lead the fight for farm workers rights in the Central Valley. A pivotal event was the grape strike in 1965 – ground zero of which was Delano, in Kern County.

Lately I’ve been driving up Highway 99 to Delano twice a week to teach a photojournalism class. Right now, the vineyards that flank the highway are heavy with grapes and I see the stacks of boxes, blue shade tarps and rows of pickers harvesting the fruit.

As I make the drive, I think of the struggles of the workers who have made history on that soil. I think about the work conditions before the enactment of safety procedures, including those shade tarps. I think about the work conditions before the UFW fought for fair pay and protection from pesticides.

And I think about the time before that when thousands of Okie farming families headed to California’s Central Valley from the Midwest, when drought had turned their farms to dust and America was trying to climb out of a deep economic depression. John Steinbeck set part of his classic novel, “The Grapes of Wrath,” here in Kern County, where migrant families lived in roadside ditches and labor camps while following the harvests for work.

“In the souls of the people, the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy for the vintage.”

As actor Mickey Farley sang these words and strummed the folksy, hymn-like tune on his guitar, the famous line from the book hit me harder than any of the times I’ve read them. The Joad family had just hurried across the stage to sign up for badly needed work as sidelined fruit pickers screamed “Strike! Strike! Strike!” A gunshot reverberated throughout the small theater.

Suddenly, the scene wasn’t just words in a book, pictures on a wall or thoughts while driving up Highway 99. It was real.

The timing of Spotlight Theatre’s staging of this play is notable. The country is currently struggling to emerge from the deepest economic recession since World War II. With unemployment at about 14 percent in Kern County, we all know someone who has lost his or her job and are trying to figure out what to do next.

“We do what we got to do.” Members of the Joad family repeat this theme several times during the play. Adapted for the stage by Tony Award-winning director and writer Frank Galati, “The Grapes of Wrath” condenses the Joad family’s westward journey and struggle to stay together into a three-hour story of survival and hope.

The reduction causes the loss of some of the characters’ emotional development, leaving out the context for some of their decision making. But if you are a fan of Steinbeck’s novel, you will understand why Noah (Mike Trujillo) decides to stay at the Colorado River instead of complete the trek to California with his family and why Connie (Nick Ono) runs off from his pregnant wife Rose of Sharon (Sarah Payne).

The strongest characters, of course, are Ma and Pa Joad (Teri Gann and Ron Fox), their son Tom Joad (Joe Cannon), and family friend and former preacher Jim Casey (Jack Slider). Gann delivers a particularly heartfelt performance as Ma, whose emotions are first seen through her facial expressions and body language, then are realized in her words as she takes a more vocal lead of the family affairs.

“We people will go on livin’ when all them people is gone,” Ma tells Tom after they’re run out of their first camp. “Don’t you fret none, Tom. A different time’s comin’.”

“How do you know?” Tom asks.

“I don’t know how.”

“Ma, I never heard you talk so much in my life.”

As Pa, Fox seems to remain too light-hearted until the last scenes, when he madly hurries to shore up the bank during the storm and then refuses to be the one to handle burying Rose of Sharon’s dead baby. Rather than in the novel, when his character breaks far earlier and gives up his role as family leader to Ma, in the play Pa’s character does not show those moments of weakness. Instead, the audience is left on its own to interpret Pa’s diminishing role.

Under Brian Sivesind’s direction, the play uses seamless transitions to portray the Joad family’s long journey to California and the key events that take place when they arrive. The beds in the initial Midwestern farm scene become the mattress-laden jalopy in which the family drives cross-country. An ensemble narrates the journey as four characters with shovels spin the wheel in the center of the stage, turning the “truck” to mimic movement.

The aisle between the first row of seats and the stage takes turns as Grandpa’s grave, the Colorado River, and the flooded bank near the boxcar from which the Joad family is forced to flee at the end of the play.

Farley’s performance of what seems to be Woodie Guthrie-inspired tunes also aid in the transitions and storytelling. He opens the play with the Battle Hymn of the Republic, from which Steinbeck named his novel.

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.”

The play does not start out somber. The cast begins as a comical troupe – a hopeful family on the verge of seeking a better life. Grampa, played by Norman Colwell, is hilarious, entering the stage with his pants unbuttoned, his unkempt white hair and beard sticking out every which way, and a fabulously foul mouth.

“Goddamn it, where his he?” Grampa says, looking for Tom, who had just been paroled after killing a man in a fight. “Got no right to put ‘im in jail. He done just what I’d do. Sons-a-bitches got no right.”

Gramma (Joyce Weingarden) also gets chuckles from the audience, spouting “Hallelujah” and “Praise Gawd” during a rambling prayer by Casey before the family sits down to its final meal before hitting the road westward.

But after the deaths of Grampa and Gramma, the mood shifts. Ma’s face becomes a perpetual, deep frown as she fights to keep the family together. Stage fights between workers and authorities command a clenched-teeth response from the audience. Gunshots ring throughout the theater and leave silent pauses for reflection.

Amid the unrest and anger that people could ever be treated in such a way, the human spirit does rise. At the government camp, a barn dance lifts the heavy weight of endurance for a few moments, as cast member Julia Stansbury leads an upbeat square dance with her colorful voice. The scene is pure indulgence – and nearly takes the comic relief overboard. But the effect is appropriate: That even when humans are reduced to animal instinct to survive, it’s their spirit that keeps them alive.

It’s the reason young Al stays behind with his betrothed when the family flees the boxcar for higher ground. And it’s the reason Rose of Sharon, weak from having just birthed a dead baby, offers her breast milk to a sick and dying man in the barn where they find shelter.

In the final moment of the play, Rose of Sharon turns to the audience and smiles. At first I was disconcerted by her action. But then I revisited the last lines of the novel:

“Her hand moved behind his head and supported it. Her fingers moved gently in his hair. She looked up and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously.”

Steinbeck leaves readers with a symbol of hope, and the purest form of human nature, to nurture.

This lesson in California history is still alive today. Farm workers are still suffering such effects as heat exhaustion and pesticide exposure despite laws to protect them. In this economy, families are losing their homes to foreclosure and are uprooting their lives to start over again. Some of our rural communities in Kern County face unemployment rates as high as 30 percent.

When we look back at the recession of 2008-2009, what social injustices will we see in hindsight? Today we may not see destitute families camping in roadside ditches, but they do exist. What are we – as family members, friends and neighbors of those in need – doing to help?

“The Grapes of Wrath”
Where: Spotlight Theatre, 1622 19th St.
When: 8 p.m. Sept. 10, 11, 12, 17, 18 and 19; with a 2 p.m. matinee Sept. 6 and 13
Admission: $18 general
Information: 634-0692 or www.spotlightfound.org