IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE -- Or Can It? ISU Hosts Staged Reading Tomorrow at 7:30

Nobel Prize winner Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel called It Can't Happen Here -- "a cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy" -- in 1935, with Hitler on the rise in Germany, a controversial politician from Louisiana named Huey Long beginning a presidential campaign, and the Great Depression and its economic woes opening the door for demagogues promising America "a return to greatness."

Lewis wrote the book to wake up the American public to the idea that it could happen here, a notion that has kept It Can't Happen Here timely (and scary) ever since. More than one voice in the media has noticed the similarities to Donald Trump's campaign.

Signet Classics put out a new edition in 2014, noting that It Can't Happen Here "juxtaposes sharp political satire with the chillingly realistic rise of a president who becomes a dictator to save the nation from welfare cheats, sex, crime, and a liberal press. Called 'a message to thinking Americans' by the Springfield Republican when it was published in 1935, It Can't Happen Here is a shockingly prescient novel that remains as fresh and contemporary as today's news."

The book spawned a stage adaptation very quickly, with Lewis himself and John C. Moffitt offering a play version that opened across the country in a flurry of simultaneous productions in October 1936. There were various attempts to make a movie out of the book, but they all faded away, although a TV movie did surface in 1968. There's at least one account that the TV miniseries (and subsequent series) V was originally intended as an adaptation of It Can't Happen Here, but the network felt that the American populace would respond better to a show where reptilian aliens were the bad guys instead of home-grown fascists. Go figure.

Earlier this year, with politicians flinging around the same rhetoric used by Lewis's characters, Berkeley Rep staged a new adaptation of the play written by Tony Taccone and Bennett S. Cohen. The central character in It Can't Happen Here, one Berzeluis "Buzz" Windrip, is charismatic and ambitious, ready to use whatever weapons he can grab -- hate, fear, lies, hysteria, bigotry -- to put himself in power. And once he's there, his weapons just get bigger and scarier to maintain his position and his empire.

To underscore the timeliness of the material, the Sinclair Lewis Foundation/Society is hosting nationwide staged readings of the Taccone and Cohen version of the play. Right here in Bloomington-Normal, we can see a staged reading of this incredibly important play, directed by Illinois State University professor Lori Adams and Ball State's John Tovar, at 7:30 pm in ISU's Westhoff Theatre.

Adams and Tovar will also serve as narrators, leading a cast of sixteen that includes Mark de Veer reading the role of demagogue Buzz Windrip, Dean Brown taking on Vermont newspaperman Doremus Jessup, who finds himself a large part of the New Underground opposition, and Robert McLaughlin as Senator Walter Trowbridge, an early opponent of Windrip's divisive brand of politics. Everyone in the cast will read multiple roles, with actors Duane Boutté, Spencer Brady, Cyndee Brown, Connie de Veer, Nathan Gaik, Alex Levy, Colleen Rice, Danny Rice, Julie Riffle, Don Shandrow and John Stark joining Mark de Veer, Dean Brown and McLaughlin to give voice to Lewis's characters.

This event is free, which means tickets are not being sold and you will need to get there on time to ensure a seat. For more information on the Normal take on It Can't Happen Here, click here to see the event's Facebook page.

Heartland's LOVE LETTERS Opens Tonight

Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepeace Ladd III have known each other and corresponded with each other since they were children. Now, after a lifetime of birthday cards, postcards, short notes and heartfelt letters, we see Melissa and Andrew in front of us, recapturing their relationship simply by reading aloud. And that is the sum and substance of A. R. Gurney's Love Letters.

Gurney was very specific when he published his play. To perform Love Letters, Gurney wanted actors to sit at separate tables -- no staring into each other's eyes or running around or popping up and down -- and simply read their correspondence.

The list of actors who've performed Love Letters is amazing, from Gurney himself, opposite Holland Taylor in the original production, to Elizabeth Taylor and James Earl Jones and Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal, on and off Broadway, big cities and small towns in North America, in London and Monte Carlo and Tokyo, and supposedly in a command performance in Judge Ito's courtroom for the jurors in the O. J. Simpson trial. The most recent Broadway production opened with Brian Dennehy and Mia Farrow, with Carol Burnett taking over for Farrow and then Alan Alda and Candice Bergen stepping in.

Broadway.com quoted Dennehy when they wrote about the play's history before that 2014 Broadway production: "[Love Letters] is an extraordinary piece," Dennehy told Today. "You cannot stage a play more simply than this, and yet it’s about everything in life. First love, loss of opportunities, loss of life, loss of love...It’s a beautiful play, and all you do is speak it."

Lori Adams and Jonathan Green rehearse Love Letters

Ron Emmons directs Love Letters for Heartland Theatre, with the Pay-What-You-Can preview performance scheduled for tonight. Emmons' production features three different casts for its three weekends of performance, with Lori Adams, Head of Acting at Illinois State University, opposite Jonathan Green, Illinois Wesleyan Provost and Dean of the Faculty, tonight through Sunday the 10th.

They'll be followed by Devon and Rhys Lovell April 14, 15, 16 and 17; and Cyndee and Dean Brown April 21, 22, 23 and 24.  Dr. Cyndee Brown is Head of Teacher Education at ISU. Rhys Lovell is Heartland Theatre's artistic director and Dean Brown is vice president of its board. All four of the Lovells and Browns have acted on Heartland's stage, with Rhys Lovell (Clybourne Park) and Cyndee Brown (Circle Mirror Transformation, Proof) both directing there, as well.

Evening performances begin at 7:30 pm, while Sunday matinees start at 2 pm. For more information on Love Letters at Heartland, click here. For show times and performance dates, click here. For reservation information, click here.

CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION Opens Tomorrow at Heartland

Annie Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation was a sensation during and after its run at Playwrights Horizon in 2009, called "the kind of unheralded gem that sends people into the streets babbling and bright-eyed with the desire to spread the word" as well as "absorbing, unblinking and sharply funny" by the New York Times.

Baker sketches out her characters, opening them like flowers, through the device of six weeks of "adult drama" classes at a small community center in Vermont. We only see these five people -- teacher Marty; her seemingly good-natured husband James; Theresa the "real" actress from New York; recently divorced Schultz, a carpenter who is somewhat inept socially; and Lauren, a high-school student who just may be wiser than the adults around her -- only in the studio where they take their class, in conversation here and there, and in the exercises they take on under Marty's direction. Baker's dialogue often sounds fragmented and broken, just like real people talk, often unassuming, as if nothing much is really being said. But there's a lot there if you listen carefully and let Baker's unique rhythms and tone weave their spell, a lot about how difficult it is to bridge the gaps between and among people, how inevitable it is to change, how complicated it is to be flawed and vulnerable and yet to keep trying to connect, anyway.

Theresa (Cristen Monson, top) reveals secrets to fellow acting students

What's beautiful about the script is how all of that unfolds right before your eyes in small moments. Some of those moments are funny, some are awkward (Baker loves awkward) and some are heartbreaking. If you let yourself fall into the play, you'll find it packs quite an emotional punch by the end.

For Heartland Theatre, Cyndee Brown directs this award-winning play, one that was chosen for the 2010 Best Plays Yearbook and hit the top of the lists of the most-produced plays in America in 2010. Brown is herself a theatre educator, so she understands what it is to see students transformed and enlightened by the "theatre games" they play. Brown's cast includes Cathy Sutliff, most recently seen at Heartland as a no-nonsense police officer in Superior Donuts, as Marty; Dean Brown, who played artist Mark Rothko in Red as James; Cristen Monson, fresh off the role of Desiree in Prairie Fire's A Little Night Music, as Theresa; Aaron J. Thomas, seen in two of Heartland's 10-Minute Plays last summer, as Schultz; and ISU student Julia Besch, who appeared in J.B. in Westhoff Theatre, as Lauren. It's a strong cast, with strong and sure direction, in a play that very much suits Heartland Theatre, which is itself located inside a community center.

There are a lot of entertainment options this week, with a big musical, two of the best plays of the 90s (and maybe the 20th century) and a nationally known humorist on stage, but it would be a major mistake for theatre lovers to overlook Annie Baker's "lovely, luminous" Circle Mirror Transformation at Heartland. This is a play you have to make room for.

For more information on the Heartland production, click here, or you may choose to proceed directly to showtimes or reservation info.

Circle Mirror Transformation opens with a Pay-What-You-Can Preview tomorrow at 7:30 pm, followed by 7:30 performances on November 8-9, 14-16 and 21-23, with Sunday matinees at 2 pm on the 17th and 24th. Note that an after-play discussion will be offered on November 17, with director Cyndee Brown giving the backstage scoop on the show as well as taking questions.

RED = Heartbeat, Passion and Blood at Heartland Theatre

Red, John Logan's award-winning play about painter Mark Rothko, covers a lot of ground. With just two characters on stage -- Rothko himself and an assistant named Ken -- Red manages to work in issues of life, death, artistic integrity, artistic value, creativity, pride, vanity, mortality, legacy, control, class, power and fulfilling a purpose in life. There's a lot there for a mere 90 minutes of theatre.

Heartland Theatre's Red is simply staged and clearly directed and acted, with a strong dramatic punch as we get to know these two men over the course of those 90 minutes. We see the artist and his studio up-close and personal, getting a glimpse into the jagged, difficult mind of someone in the midst of creation. Dean Brown's sharp, uncompromising portrayal of Rothko shows us a smart, verbal, challenging man, someone who understands his own process but has no patience for anyone else's. Why should he? He's Rothko.

As the play unfolds, we understand that Rothko has been paid a hefty sum of money to paint a series of murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York's fancy Seagram Building. But he decries commercialism and the kind of art patron who just wants something to hang over a mantle. True art should be reserved for the worthy, the discerning, the wise few who evidence the right depth of understanding. When his assistant points out that making these murals for the Four Seasons is the height of hypocrisy, that Rothko is really "just decorating another dining room for the super-rich," creating "the world's most expensive over-mantles," Rothko retorts that he hopes that his dark, disturbing paintings will "ruin the appetite of every rich son-of-a-bitch who eats there."

Is he telling the truth? Or deluding himself that his motives are purer than money and fame? It's hard to know, even when the play is over. But it's that conflict, the reds and blacks swirling around in Logan's script, that makes the performance fly by so quickly, and makes it work so well as a piece of drama.

Christopher Connelly directs his actors -- Brown as Rothko and a fresh-faced Rian Wilson as the assistant -- with an eye on clarity and conflict, creating scenes that pull you in and hold you. Brown is terrific as Rothko, turning from overbearing to small and petty, from frustrated to terrifying, and making it all believable under the skin of one complicated man. And Wilson is a proper foil as the untested young man who just tries to keep up with the master until he's taken as much as he can take.

In the end, this Red is about the art of theatre as much as it's about the art of painting, about the need to create, to communicate, to find an audience who will understand and make the struggle to create worthwhile. For me, the efforts of Connelly and Brown and Wilson -- and scenic designer Kenneth P. Johnson, costume designer Gail Dobbins and lighting designer Anita McDaniel -- were definitely worthwhile to bring Red to life.

RED
By John Logan

Heartland Theatre Company

Director: Christopher Connelly
Scenic Designer and Technical Director: Kenneth P. Johnson
Stage Manager and Board Operator: Rachel Krein
Assistant Director: Noga Ashkenazi
Lighting Designer: Anita McDaniel
Costume Designer: Gail Dobbins
Properties: Melissa Mullen
Sound Designer: Christopher Connelly
Sound Engineer: Isaac Mandel

Running time: 90 minutes, performed without intermission

Remaining performances: November 8-10 and 15-17 at 7:30 pm and November 11 and 18 at 2 pm.

For reservation information, click here.

Ready for RED at Heartland?

John Logan's play Red revolves around painter Mark Rothko, someone who'd found huge financial and critical success as an artist. As the play begins, Rothko has been commissioned to paint a series of murals for New York's posh Four Seasons restaurant.

But as successful as he is, Rothko still has fears. He worries that newcomers will overtake and eclipse him, and that his commercial success has made him a sell-out. But his big fear is that "one day the black will swallow the red." No matter the fame, no matter how many high-end diners eat their swell food under Rothko's murals, he wonders whether he will be remembered, and whether he will still be alive.

It's the fears and insecurities that make the Rothko of Logan's script so compelling. And the way the script unfolds, as we get to see Rothko through the lens of his assistant, a painter named Ken, there's plenty of tension, plenty of crackle, plenty of arguments about what it means to create. Red won the Tony Award for Best Play of 2010 as well as the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play.

As a two-man show, Red is a perfect choice for Heartland Theatre's intimate space. Director Christopher Connelly proved he knows his way around a visually stunning show with The Diviners in 2011, and he has a fine cast to work with this time, with Dean Brown, who was so good as the mathematician dad in Proof, as Rothko, and Rian Wilson, who broke hearts with his sensitive portrayal of the hydrophobic boy at the center of The Diviners, as assistant Ken.

Dean Brown and Rian Wilson appear in Heartland's Red

Heartland's production of Red begins with a pay-what-you-can preview performance at 7:30 pm on November 1. That will be followed by performances November 2-3, 8-10 and 15-17 at 7:30 pm and matinees on three Sundays, November 4, 11 and 18 at 2 pm.

The November 11 matinee will feature a special discussion afterwards with artists Harold Gregor and Ken Holder.

For more information, click here for show times and here for reservation information.

Heartland Announces RED Cast

Director Christopher Connelly has announced his creative team for Heartland Theatre's upcoming production of Red, the play by John Logan about artist Mark Rothko and his struggle to stay true to his artistic vision in the face of a huge commission. Art, commerce, life, death... Rothko's vision of Red is ultimately about staying alive.

For Heartland, Dean Brown, who did such excellent work in Proof and Bus Stop at Heartland, will play Rothko, while Rian Wilson, most recently seen in a riveting performance as Buddy in The Diviners, will play Ken, the artist's assistant who challenges him.

Also working on the play are Rachel Krein (stage manager), Kenneth Johnson (scenic designer), Anita McDaniel (lighting designer) and Noga Ashkenazi (assistant director.)

Logan's play won six Tony Awards for the Broadway production that starred Alfred Molina and Eddie Redmayne as Rothko and his assistant. The play itself, director Michael Grandage and Redmayne all won in their categories. That version of the play was originally produced at London's Donmar Warehouse, where Grandage was the artistic director.

Red is scheduled to open at Heartland Theatre on November 1, with performances through November 18th. For more information, you can read about the play here and see reservation information here.