COOS BAY - Reality can mean a lot of things in the world of entertainment.

It's a concept that most dramas aspire to represent, but the conflicting goal of offering an escape from reality usually means those representations fall short. As TV producers twist the term in ever more creative ways and technology increasingly allows people to isolate themselves in their own worlds, a dose of reality - what life is really like for other people - may be in order.

Reality hits you over the head and hits hard in “Nickel and Dimed,” which opens tonight at Southwestern Oregon Community College.

When social critic Barbara Ehrenreich (Cheri Valentine) has the idea for a journalist to research the experience of the working class by spending a month undercover living on a minimum-wage job, she doesn't think she's the right person for the assignment.

“I know how hard it is. I won't be surprised,” she tells her editor (George Nixon). “You need somebody who is going to be shocked.”

Every step of the way, what she finds is, in a word, shocking.

The test Ehrenreich gives herself: “Can a single female, fit and of reasonable intelligence, land in a strange town, find a place to live and a crappy job, hold the job for a month, eat, keep her clothes clean and save enough to make next month's rent?”

Basically, no.

Ehrenreich has been criticized for allowing herself to use her ATM card in the event of an emergency. Far from undermining her story's credibility, this should amplify a viewer's perception of the difficulty faced by those who don't have such a safety net.

Director Rob Clingan said he wanted to do a socially engaging work and had been mulling Joan Holden's adaptation of Ehrenreich's 2001 book for two years.

With 26 scene changes, 40 characters, 100 props and 300 lighting changes, the production has been a monumental undertaking for Clingan and his students, despite choices made to simplify the project.

“What she gave us is a screenplay,” Clingan said of the script, explaining why he created dozens of slides to serve as backdrops for a minimalist set, which consists of eight red crates. “I couldn't see building a Denny's restaurant or a Wal-Mart.”

Barbara's journey begins at a “Kenny's” in Key West, Fla. After explaining why she's been out of the work force for 30 years, Barbara learns the ropes waiting tables from Gail (Emma Metcalf), who advises her never to go to the manager (Kevin Thurkow) with any problems.

Problems arise frequently, as the fast pace of the restaurant is a major challenge for Barbara. Before she can figure out how to input an order into the computer, customers are already complaining that it's not ready yet.

In calmer moments, she gets acquainted with a busboy (Tim Hampton) who doesn't speak English and a hostess (Peg Boots) who lives in her car.

Calculating that the rent on her cracker-box trailer will consume 80 percent of her paycheck, Barbara realizes she needs a second job. She takes on cleaning work at a motel, beginning already exhausted from long shifts at a frantic pace at Kenny's.

When Hector (Jesus Torres), the foul-mouthed cook, is calling out ready orders every three seconds in a hectic scene that exemplifies the play's impact, Barbara runs out.

Having failed to keep the job for a month, she decides to try again elsewhere. She calls her boyfriend (Mike Bradley) and announces she'll be on the road longer than expected.

Between acts a sound loop plays quotes from Presidents Bush and Clinton, which are muffled by a duplicate loop that forces them to talk over each other.

Barbara's next attempt involves getting acquainted with the different types of stains found in toilets while working for a maid service in Maine that cleans local mansions in teams of four. Team leader Holly (Katherine Andreason) explains the rules, the hardest of which to swallow is a ban on drinking water while in a house. They're also not allowed to make phone calls, but Maddie (Marina Lytton) is always checking on her kids.

At each job Barbara confronts a moral dilemma between speaking up about the horrifying labor practices she encounters and maintaining the silence compelled by her status. Having let herself down before, Barbara decides she can't hold back when pregnant Holly is injured.

But Holly is so committed to the rules that she can hardly contemplate taking a drink of water, let alone reporting a workers' comp claim. Even after learning that the company charges clients 15 times what it pays each maid, Holly, Maddie and Marge (Corina Daugherty) still side with the owner (Bradley) over Barbara.

Also common to each job is a personality test that asks applicants to agree or disagree with statements such as, “The rules must be followed to the letter at all times,” and, “There's room in every corporation for a nonconformist.”

“(That test) tells them nothing,” Barbara rants. “It just tells us who's boss.”

Who's boss, however, is painfully clear to everyone she meets, none of whom ever challenge a boss, even one breaking the law.

At a “Mall-Mart” store in Minneapolis, Barbara and a new friend, Melissa (Patricia Parsons), are ordered to work extra hours off the clock by assistant manager Howard (Bryan Duggan).

“The numbers make the decisions,” Howard says in his defense to the audience.

The speech is interrupted by a scene in which the actors step out of character to discuss the elephant across the street from Southwestern's campus, confronting each other and the audience for their roles in making Wal-Mart one of the world's most powerful corporations.

Clingan said he wrote the scene because a different breakout scene supplied by the script wouldn't have been relevant to local audiences but was widely considered one of the most powerful parts of the play.

After documenting so excruciatingly the plight of the working poor, the play could lay the blame with the corporations and low-level managers who exploit them. Instead it asks the audience to acknowledge the benefits everyone in the middle class receives from the suffering of others.

In conversations scattered throughout the play, Barbara struggles to explain this to her boyfriend, to no avail. But as she finds for herself, from how nothing in her years of familiarity with the statistics on poverty could prepare her for the experience of it, it's not something that can be explained. You have to see it.

There are five chances to do that between now and March 10.

The cast also includes Andrea Ferren, Kendra Hackney, Makena Romas and Isabelle Stuart.

Performances are at 7 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and at 3 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $8 and free for students.