Join the fun at IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, A LIVE RADIO PLAY at ISU CPA Dec 2 to 9

If you've already chosen what you're doing December 1, you may want to consider December 2. That's the day Illinois State University's School of Theatre and Dance offers a rarity -- not just a show with a holiday theme, but a show with performances in December. Since ISU's academic calendar doesn't usually go very far into December, they don't usually schedule performances then, either. But this year...

This year, ISU professor Connie de Veer is directing It's a Wonderful Life, a Live Radio Play, a stage adaptation by Joe Landry from the famous Frank Capra movie that shows all the action as if it were happening in a radio studio in the 1940s. Most of us weren't around to see how radio put on its plays back then, but if you attended A Prairie Home Companion or watched Remember WENN or the radio play episode of Frasier, you've seen actors dropping pages of their scripts in front of standing microphones, switching from one character to the next while the sound effects operator rattles sheets of tin and pops balloons to sound like gunshots.

To see the chaos of a what purports to be a live broadcast adds a fun dimension to the sweet, heartwarming story of George Bailey, the regular guy in Bedford Falls who thinks his life isn't worth anything until an angel intercedes and shows him otherwise on Christmas Eve.

For the ISU production, the cast includes William Olsen as George Bailey; Sarah Seidler as his wife, Mary; Jack VanBoven as angel Clarence as well as Uncle Billy; Breeann Dawson as Violet and little Zuzu; Mark de Veer as mean Old Man Potter along with Gower and Joseph; Marixa Ford as Mrs. Hatch, the stage manager, the Foley artist and the pianist; Everson Pierce as Pete, Burt, Ernie and Sam W.; Jacob Artner as the announcer, Mr. Welch, Martini, Tommy and Harry; Gina Sanfilippo as Ruth and Matilda, and Becky Murphy as Janie, Sadie Vance and Rose Bailey.

According to Connie de Veer in an interview with ISU News, these ten actors will "play all the roles, do all the sound effects, and even present a preshow with holiday songs and an audience sing-along!"

It's a Wonderful Life, a Live Radio Play opens Friday at the ISU Center for the Performing Arts with a performance at 7:30 pm, followed by 7:30 performances on December 3, 6, 7, 8 and 9, and 2 pm matinees on Saturday the 3rd and Sunday the 4th. The December 9th evening performance includes special alumni events including a preshow reception, Christmas Carols, a performance by the ISU madrigals and even an appearance by Reggie Redbird. If you're an alum and you want to participate, you are asked to purchase your tickets before Friday, either by calling Alumni Relations at 309-438-2586 or checking out this link.

For all other performances, tickets are available in person at the Center for the Performing Arts box office between the hours of 11 am and 5 pm Monday through Friday, by calling the box hours during those hours at 309-438-2535, or online through Ticketmaster.com.

The Tragedy of War: TROJAN WOMEN Takes the Stage Tonight at ISU

You won't find many 2400-year-old plays that survive and flourish in the 21st century. But that is exactly what The Trojan Women has achieved since Euripides brought his play to the theater competition at the City Dionysia festival in 415 BC, during the Peloponnesian War. The Trojan Women came in second that year. The obscure playwright who won doesn't really matter, because Euripides and The Trojan Women have triumphed where it counted. They're still here.

Among Greek tragedians of the time, Euripides was not as big a name as Aeschylus and Sophocles, who racked up far more Dionysian victories than he did, but by the 18th and 19th centuries, English poets were lauding him and writing odes in his honor. Elizabeth Barrett Browning famously called him:

Our Euripides, the human,
With his droppings of warm tears,
And his touches of things common
Till they rose to touch the spheres.

There's something in the "common" and "human," as well as a focus on women, that helps explain why modern writers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Ellen McLaughlin (not to mention Carole Braverman and her Yiddish Trojan Women) have been drawn to translate and adapt his work. After all, there has always been war and women have always been used and abused as "trophies, spoils, baggage," as McLaughlin's script puts it.

Connie de Veer, who is directing The Trojan Women (and McLaughlin's adaptation) for Illinois State University's School of Theatre and Dance, echoes that thought. "The Trojan Women is an anti-war play that focuses chiefly on the costs of war levied on women," she writes in her director's note for the play. "The women of Troy suffer colossal losses -- of loved ones, home, identity, status, selfhood, purpose, and finally, ownership of their own bodies. Sadly, such is the nature of war to this day."

De Veer goes on to quote Grace Halsell and an article in The Washington Report about the fallout on women after the Serbian war. Halsell says, "... women have always suffered from rape--especially during wartime. Helen of Troy was a war trophy. So was Cleopatra. They go under the heading: to the victor belong the spoils. Rape was always regarded as an inevitable by-product of war."

Recognizing that and personifying the consequences of war is exactly what The Trojan Women is all about. With their city reduced to a pile of ash behind them, these sisters, wives and daughters face a future of exile, rape, slavery, and endless mourning for the parade of loved ones they've lost.

Although that kind of climate may seem difficult for today's college kids to access, de Veer gives credit to her actors and designers. In her words, they "have worked courageously and honestly to access their own grief, loss, and longing in order to tell this story with truth, passion, and compassion. We hope our efforts invite you to do the same, uniting us all across barriers of culture and time, in the universal and inevitable hard work of grieving."

Her cast includes Brandi Jones as Hecuba, the queen of Troy; Bree Haskell as Helen, the stolen bride whose angry husband started this war; Clare Supplott as mad Cassandra; Mary DeWitt as Andromache, the widow of Trojan hero Hector and mother to his doomed son;  Mark de Veer as god Poseidon; RJ Cecott as Talthybius, a Greek soldier; and Spencer Brady, Paige Brantley, Olivia Candocia, Gina Cleveland, Krystina Coyne, Vanessa Garcia, Johanna Kerber, Becky Murphy, Shakeyla Thomas, Samantha Peroutka, Leah Soderstrom and Kaitlyn Wehr as the Women of Troy.

Scenic designer is Samantha Gribben, Anna Hill designed the costumes, Kyle Techentin did props and Hannah Beaudry is in charge of hair and makeup for the production, while Laura Bouxsein is stage manager.

The Trojan Women begins tonight at Illinois State University's Westhoff Theatre, with performances continuing through November 14. For information, click here. For tickets, you can call the box office at 309-438-2535 or go directly to Ticketmaster.

GLASS MENAGERIE Shines at Heartland

Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie may be over 70, but it still seems young and fresh on the stage. There's a reason for that. It lies in Williams' central conflict, with a mother so lost in what she wants for her children that she doesn't see who they are or what they want. The parent/child impasse, the desperation, the inability to understand... It's achingly real.

Because of that, Amanda Wingfield, the mother in question, has been a dream role for generations, as has her son Tom, this memory play's unhappy narrator and a representation of Williams himself. They seem like real people who could be plucked off any family tree.

In the context of the play, the Wingfield family, such as it is, has fallen on hard times. Dad decamped years ago, and the three remaining Wingfields -- Amanda, Tom and daughter Laura, a fragile, shy young woman -- live in a poor apartment in St. Louis. Tom supports the family with his income from a drab job in a shoe factory, even as he dreams of becoming a writer. His mother pushes him to make more of himself, but she also constantly interrupts when he tries to write. As she repeats stories of her own girlhood as a Southern belle, Amanda is desperate to find "gentleman callers" for her daughter, who becomes ill at the very idea.

Don LaCasse, the head of the MFA directing program at Illinois State University, makes this Glass Menagerie moody and a little misty, as befits a memory play. He is aided in that effort by John Stark's beautiful set, framed in brick and lace to keep the action constricted and confined, with a tricky little corner fire escape that affords Tom a breath of fresh air. Cassie Mings' lighting design is just as impressive, moving the actors from shadow to candlelight and darkness and providing a really lovely final tableau.

Connie de Veer leads the cast as Amanda, offering a fully-drawn portrayal of a woman who expected so much more from her life than where she is now. It's not easy to make this domineering, narcissistic woman sympathetic, but de Veer finds a way. We can see her desperation and her lost dreams on her face and in her eyes, no matter what the facade, and the touches of humor in the performance only serve to underline that.

Joe Faifer is strong and equally compelling as Tom, who loves his sister -- and his mother -- even as he chokes on the stranglehold they have on him. His Tom is a little rough around the edges, someone we can see bolting to become a merchant marine, with a command of language that tells us everything we need to know about Tennessee the writer. The layers and the contradictions are all there in Faifer's performance.

As Laura, Elsa Torner is lovely and delicate, visibly shattering at even a hint of having to make her way in the world, breaking our hearts every time she tries to make herself heard, while Patrick Riley's ebullient Gentleman Caller is a welcome counterpoint with his boyish enthusiasm and can-do spirit.

The beauty of this production is that each of the four shows dashed dreams and failed expectations, giving strong support to each corner of Williams' play. After we've met them, we want more for each of them. It's the eternal human dilemma, right there in front of our eyes.

THE GLASS MENAGERIE
By Tennessee Williams

Heartland Theatre Company

Director: Don LaCasse
Assistant Director: Megan Hoepker
Scenic Designer: John Stark
Assistant Scenic Designer/Charge Artist/Properties Master: Jen Kazmierczak
Costume Designer: Lauren Lowell
Lighting Designer: Cassie Mings
Sound Designer: Shannon O'Neill
Assistant Sound Designer: Mat Piotrowski
Stage Manager: Matthew Harter

Cast: Connie de Veer, Joseph Faifer, Patrick Riley and Elsa Torner.

Running time: 2:10, including one 10-minute intermission.

Remaining performances: April 23, 24, 25 and 26, 2015

For performances times and ticket information, click here.

THE GLASS MENAGERIE Opens Tomorrow at Heartland Theatre

It's not like Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie has ever gone out of style, but still... Recently -- or maybe since the Broadway revival that starred Cherry Jones as Amanda Wingfield and Zachary Quinto as her son Tom -- Glass Menagerie has been hotter than hot.

Heartland Theatre's production, which opens tomorrow night with a "pay what you can preview," is directed by Don LaCasse, the Illinois State University professor at the helm of By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Lynn Nottage's musing on what it meant to be an African-American movie star in the first half of the 20th century, last fall for ISU, and Douglas Post's psychological mystery Earth and Sky for Heartland last season. The Glass Menagerie is considerably different from either of those shows, although it does have strong female characters in common with the other two.

LaCasse directs ISU professor Connie de Veer as Amanda Wingfield, the lapsed Southern belle who despairs of understanding her children or the place her life has led her. The Glass Menagerie offers de Veer a chance to take on one of the biggest roles in the American theatrical canon, one originated by the legendary Laurette Taylor and revived on stage by the likes of Maureen Stapleton, Jessica Tandy, Julie Harris, Jessica Lange, and, as mentioned above, the amazing Cherry Jones. Joanne Woodward played Amanda in a very well-received 1987 film directed by her husband Paul Newman, while Shirley Booth and Katharine Hepburn were very different Amandas in very different versions of the play produced for television.

The actors who have played Tom, the stand-in role for Tennessee Williams himself, are also a Who's Who of the American stage, from Eddie Dowling, who produced and directed the 1945 Chicago production that put the play on the map and then moved to Broadway; to Montgomery Clift, George Grizzard, Hal Holbrook, Željko Ivanek, John Malkovich, Rip Torn and Sam Waterston. And, of course, Zachary Quinto, the new Spock, who was opposite Cherry Jones.

For LaCasse's production, Tom will be played by Joe Faifer, a fine actor who graced ISU stages in roles as disparate as inebriated old actor Selsdon Mowbray in Noises Off, an innocent man sent to Death Row in The Exonerated and a father slipping into dementia in Tales of the Lost Formicans.

That's the beauty of The Glass Menagerie and why it's such a great choice for all these revivals and reimaginings -- the characters are so strong and yet so flexible that every production is a little different, each providing a new lens to see the play. Joanne Woodward and John Malkovich make for a unique mother and son, just as Laurette Taylor and Eddie Dowling did before them. And de Veer and Faifer will at Heartland.

They will be joined at Heartland by Elsa Torner, who played Christina, the youngest Mundy sister in ISU's recent Dancing at Lughnasa, as Laura, Tom's fragile sister, while Patrick Riley, seen to good advantage in The Marriage of Bette and Boo and Playboy of the Western World in Westhoff Theatre, as Jim, the would-be suitor Tom brings home after pressure from his mother to provide a "Gentleman Caller" for his sister.

After tomorrow's "pay what you can" preview, The Glass Menagerie will continue at Heartland Theatre on June 10 and 11; 16, 17, 18 and 19; and 23, 24, 25 and 26, with evening performances at 7:30 pm and Sunday matinees at 2 pm. The cast will be present for a talkback after the matinee on the 19th to answer questions about how they approached their roles and why this play continues to exert such a strong influence in American theatre.

Follow these links for more information on showtimes and reservations.

ISU 2015-16: From NYC to Chicago, From Troy to El Salvador and Never Never Land

It's that time! Spring for theaters -- even college theater departments -- means it's also time to put together schedules for the fall. For playwrights, it means lots of rejections (and maybe a few acceptance letters) in their mailboxes. For actors and designers, it means looking ahead to decide what they most want to work on.

In that spirit, as well as to give local audiences something to look forward to, Illinois State University has released their tentative schedule for fall 2015 and spring 2016. Although dates are not carved in stone, this is what the School of Theatre and Dance has planned:

Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs will open in late September in the Center for the Performing Arts. MFA directing candidate Jonathan Hunt-Sell, who just finished up his run of Moliere's School for Wives, will direct this warm comedy about a Jewish family living in Brooklyn in the 1930s, with son Eugene (based on Simon himself) dreaming of girls, baseball and a life not bound by his crazy relatives. Brighton Beach Memoirs is the first play of three Simon wrote about Eugene Jerome, moving on to his military years in Biloxi Blues and the beginnings of his comedy career in Broadway Bound. Brighton Beach originally starred Matthew Broderick as Eugene on Broadway. It's a sweet play, full of Depression-era atmosphere and eccentric characters, with good roles for both men and women.

The action moves from New York to Chicagoland in October with Grease, the 1950s musical with book, music and lyrics by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. This trip to Rydell High, with its hotrods, Pink Ladies and summer lovin', will be directed by Lori Adams. The stage musical, which played for 3388 performances in its first Broadway incarnation and then came back for 1500 more in the 90s, spawned the hugely successful movie with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. If you know all the words to "Beauty School Drop-Out" and "Greased Lightning" (and let's not kid ourselves -- who doesn't?), you will be first in line to see Grease at ISU's CPA.

Also in October, Duane Boutté will direct August Wilson's Fences, winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, in Westhoff Theatre. Like Grease, Fences is set in the 1950s. Like Brighton Beach Memoirs, it has a connection to baseball. More importantly, it's part of a larger collection of plays. Fences is the sixth decade Wilson dealt with in his century of plays about African-Americans trying to find their way in the United States. The original Broadway production starred James Earl Jones as Troy, now a garbage man, but once a promising baseball player before he was sent to prison for robbery.

That will be followed by The Trojan Women, a tragedy from Greek playwright Euripides that focuses on the horrific after-effects of war for the women left behind after their world has been destroyed. Their husbands, fathers and children are dead. Their homes are gone. And they face a future of grief, death, rape and slavery. Connie de Veer will direct Ellen McLaughlin's adaptation of The Trojan Women in Westhoff Theatre. McLaughlin, an actress best known for originating the role of the Angel in Angels in America, has come back to the Greeks again and again, with works like Iphigenia and Other Daughters, Helen, The Persians and Oedipus on her resume. Her Trojan Women has not made it to Broadway, although Gilbert Murray's translation played at the Cort Theatre in 1941. A 1971 film version drawing from Edith Hamilton's translation starred Katharine Hepburn and Vanessa Redgrave, and those are the faces you see in the poster here.

The Trojan Women will be followed by a dance concert in November to finish up the 2015 part of the schedule.

In February 2015, we'll see Street Scene, with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Langston Hughes, based on the 1929 Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Elmer Rice, in the Center for the Performing Arts. Rice also wrote the book for this "American opera," which focuses on two swelteringly hot summer days on the steps of a tenement on New York's East Side. The people who live inside the tenement -- a variety of cultures and ethnicities, ages and genders -- fall in love, have affairs, argue, struggle to pay the rent, celebrate and despair.

Also in February, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and its star-crossed lovers will come to Westhoff Theatre in a production directed by Kevin Rich.

Bocon!,  by Lisa Loomer, a dark piece of magical realism about a Salvadoran boy who notices that everyone he knows who speaks out disappears, will be directed by Cyndee Brown for Westhoff in March. The image you see above comes from a New Mexico production of the play.

That will be followed by Wendy and Peter Pan, a different take on the Peter Pan story, adapted for the stage by Ella Hickson, directed by Jessika Malone in the CPA in April. This version of the boy who didn't want to grow up comes from the Royal Shakespeare Company.

And with one final dance concert in April, the Illinois State University School of Theatre and Dance closes out another eclectic season.

Heartland Announces Cast for OTHER DESERT CITIES

Heartland Theatre and director Sandra Zielinski have announced who will be whom when they present Jon Robin Baitz's dysfunctional family drama Other Desert Cities in February.

Other Desert Cities involves the wealthy Wyeths of Palm Springs, California, a family that enjoys access to the highest levels of American society. In their heyday, they dined at the White House and hobnobbed with Ron and Nancy Reagan. Patriarch Lyman Wyeth, an actor turned ambassador, probably went shooting for big game with Dick Cheney at one time or another, while his whip-smart wife Polly, who once wrote for a hit television show with her counterculture sister Silda, no doubt enjoyed cocktails with Charlton Heston on the way to the Golden Globes. On the outside, theirs looks like a charmed life.

But they have their secrets. And daughter Brooke, a writer getting over a breakdown, decides what she needs most in the world is to air her version of one of those secrets. When she comes home with the tell-all book she’s written about that particular, devastating incident in their past, push comes to shove in the wake of truth and lies and simmering conflict between parents and children, siblings, and political ideals.

The Broadway production of Other Desert Cities was nominated for five Tony Awards, winning Judith Light the first of two awards in the Best Featured Actress category. Her role as Silda, the sister who can't quite pull it together, earned her a Drama Desk as well as that Tony. Baitz was also nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the play.

For Heartland, Connie de Veer, an Illinois State University professor who last appeared in Sirens and The Trip to Bountiful at Heartland, will play Polly Wyeth, with Joe Penrod, recently seen as Fredrick Egerman in A Little Night Music for Prairie Fire, as her husband Lyman. Carol Scott, who played Aunt Abby in Arsenic and Old Lace at Community Players back in September and took on memorable roles in Doubt, Woman in Mind and The Beauty Queen of Lenane at Heartland, will play Polly's sister Silda.

Polly and Lyman's daughter Brooke, the one who stirs up the hornet's nest, will be portrayed by Jessie Swiech, an ISU grad who appeared in The Women of Lockerbie, Julius Caesar and Major Barbara. MFA actor Joey Banks, who appeared in Spring Awakening to open ISU's fall season, will play Brooke's younger brother Tripp, someone who seems at times to be the only grounded member of the Wyeth family.

Heartland's production of this fierce, funny play will open with a Pay What You Can preview on February 20, 2014, followed by performances from February 21 through March 9th. For showtimes, click here. For reservation information, click here.

Opening Tomorrow: SEND THE LIGHT at ISU's Westhoff Theatre

An all-new, all-electric version of Send the Light, an original musical about bringing electrical power to rural communities with a script by Don Shandrow and music and lyrics by Phil Shaw, opens tomorrow night at Illinois State University's Westhoff Theatre. Performances begin at 7:30 pm on October 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25 and 26, with a 2 pm matinee on October 19.

This is how the show is being billed for this ISU production:

A world premiere script with a rural setting in the American heartland of 1936. The action of the play concerns the controversy surrounding the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) and its impact on farm communities. Many groups, especially utility companies, opposed the federal government's involvement in developing and distributing electric power. Onstage, conflicts arise within families and communities as they argue the pros and cons of "sending the light" to rural farms. This play is a community outreach project with Cornbelt Energy.

Associate Professor Connie de Veer and Assistant Michael J. Vetere III are co-directing Send the Light, with a cast that mixes community members like Clark Abraham and Susan Palmer with ISU actors like Kate Klemchuck, Andrew Rogalny and Levi Ellis. For the complete cast list, click here.

You can read more about Don Shandrow and the story behind Send the Light at ISU's Illinois State Stories, see the production's Facebook page here, or get ticket information here or here. Sara Ilene Shifflet has also uploaded behind-the-scenes videos about Send the Light to Youtube, and you can choose from lighting design information from David Warfel and some of the cast (seen above), the scoop on scenic design from designer Megan Lane, or an "official trailer" for the show.

Switching on SEND THE LIGHT for ISU

Just about two years ago, I wrote a piece on Send the Light, an original musical from Don Shandrow (book) and Phil Shaw (music and lyrics) that tells the story of how electrical cooperatives brought power to farms and small towns. At that time, Send the Light was produced as a "One Shot Deal" under the auspices of Shandrow's New Route Theatre.

Send the Light started back in 2007, with a production that played at the McLean County Museum of History as well as in front of electric cooperative associations in Illinois and Missouri. Half of the four-person cast from 2007, including local actors Rhys Lovell and Irene Taylor, returned for the 2011 one-night performance.

Now Shandrow and Shaw are bringing a new version of Send the Light -- with a much expanded cast -- to Westhoff Theatre at Illinois State University, for performances from October 17 to 26. ISU faculty members Connie de Veer and Michael Vetere III are co-directing, with a cast that blends community members and students in a (get ready for it) cooperative venture!

Rather than the four-member cast from 07 and 11, this Send the Light will feature somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 actors when all is said and done. From the Illinois State University Department of Theatre, actors Peter Balser, Laura Bouxsein, Molly Briggs, Nicholas Brown, Levi Ellis, Chelsea Gulbransen, Tommy Howie, Jake Kazmierczak, Alyssa Klein, Kate Klemchuk, Janice Kulka, Sage McCracken, Brandon Miller, Drew Mills, Paulina Pahl, Lauren Partch, Andrew Piechota, Andrew Rogalny, Jr., and David Zallis have been cast. They will be working with local actors Clark Abraham, Leola Bellamy, Holly Klass, Wes Melton, Susan Palmer, George Peterson-Karlan and Terri Ryburn, whose names you may recognize from performances with Heartland Theatre and its Young at Heartland troupe as well as Illinois Voices Theatre, New Route Theatre, and other area events.

Send the Light is a community outreach project with Cornbelt Energy. For all the details, click here to see the play's Facebook event page.

Home Grown Musical Comedy in DOWN HOME DIVAS

Have you heard about Down Home Divas? If not, you'd better get up to speed quickly, because word  on the street is that this fundraiser for Illinois State University's Friends of the Arts scholarship program is almost sold out.

I'm not kidding. There are only a few tickets left for the one and only performance on Saturday, February 16 at 8 pm. Down Home Divas will take place inside the ISU Alumni Center at 1101 N. Main Street in Normal. Tickets are $25 and you can purchase them throught Ticketmaster or at the Center for the Performing Arts box office at ISU.

This down-home musical stars Connie de Veer, associate professor at Illinois State’s School of Theatre and Dance, and Michelle Vought, professor in ISU's School of Music, as old friends Deenie and Bee. The two were once roommates at Julliard, but life has taken them on different highways and byways since then. When they meet up again, their friendship -- and musical rivalry -- has become more a lot complicated.

Down Home Divas is based on the book by local author Nancy Steele Brokaw, who has previously written the libretto for shows like the Holiday Spectacular, Tortoise and Hare's Big Race and Fertile Ground, an original opera commissioned for Prairie Fire Theatre. Brokaw teamed with director Lori Adams on those Holiday Spectaculars, and Adams will be at the helm of Down Home Divas, as well. Pianist Matthew Merz will provide accompaniment.

Doors will open at 7 and a cash bar and hors d'oeuvres will be available at that time, with the performance beginning at 8. Wine and desserts will be served at tables during the show.

For more information or to read more detailed bios of the performers and artists behind Down Home Divas, click here.

Connie de Veer and the ISU School of Theatre Facebook Page

I find out all kinds of interesting things at the School of Theatre at Illinois State Facebook page. Right now, there are notices about a staged reading of Dustin Lance Black's Proposition 8 play (it's called "8," which doesn't look like much all by itself, so I added the Prop 8 part) and Dr. Ashley Lucas offering a solo performance called "Doin' Time" about the affect of incarceration on families.

And then I got an inside scoop that Eli Van Sickel, the guy who creates ISU's School of Theatre and Dance Facebook and Twitter presence, is looking for 500 "likes" on that Facebook page. And to get to his magic 500 number (they're sitting at 480 last I looked), Eli somehow convinced the delightful and charming Connie de Veer, Associate Professor who teaches acting, voice and Alexander Technique at ISU and specializes in dialects, to perform some text to be identified later (perhaps Dr. Seuss or a soliloquy from "Hamlet"?) in a dialect or series of dialects if and only if they get over the 500 finish line.

I don't know about you, but I would love to see (and hear) Connie de Veer launch into "To be or not to be" with a Scottish brogue. Or do every line in some new exotic accent. Wouldn't you like to hear "shuffle off this mortal coil" sound like it came from Transylvania? I could totally get behind that.

So, anyway, at least twenty of you need to get over to Facebook and click the LIKE button at the top of the School of Theatre at Illinois State Facebook Page. NOW!

La Vie "Bohème" Begins Tomorrow at ISU Center for the Performing Arts

Yes, "La Vie Bohème"is a song in the musical "Rent," and no, "Rent" is not being performed at ISU tomorrow night or any other night as far as I know. But "Rent" is based on "La Bohème," updating Puccini's opera about young, Bohemian artistic types --  a poet, a painter, a singer -- living in Paris in the mid-19th century. Where Puccini dealt with consumption, drugs and sex in "La Bohème," Jonathan Larson commented on AIDS, drugs and sex in "Rent."

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, oui?

Or, as ISU's facebook page for the event puts it: "This 1896 opera in four acts explores the Bohemian milieu of Paris in the 1840s, the love between the sickly seamstress Mimi and the poet Rodolfo, and the timeless question faced by artists everywhere -- should we party or pay the rent?"

Connie de Veer, who did such good work at the helm of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" last year, takes up directing duties on this "La Bohème." Performances begin tomorrow at the Center for the Performing Arts and run through April 7th.

De Veer's cast includes Andy Hudson and John Ramseyer alternating in the role of Rodolfo, Hyejin Park and Caroline Pircorn alternating as Mimi, Sarah Fallon and Laura Pfeiffer as Musetta, and Robbie Holden as Marcello. Those roles correspond to Roger, Mimi, Maureen and Mark, if you have a thing for "Rent."

And if you do have a thing for "Rent," as so many theater fans did in the late 90s (almost exactly a hundred years after Puccini wrote his opera), you would be well advised to see the original and judge for yourself how the themes of love and loss, illness and deprivation among the underclass, trying to lead a life of art and beauty without selling out, played in 1896.

"La Bohème" is, according to some sources, the fourth-most performed opera in the world. It has survived this long because of the quality of the music, the depth of its characters, and the timeless themes. I have no doubt that Connie de Veer will waltz her "Bohème" in the right direction. The poster alone tells me they will be focusing on the heightened love affairs and romantic complications in the piece, which is, after all, what made everybody swoony over "Rent."

For performance and ticket information, click here. You'll find their Facebook page linked in several places in this post.