Illinois Theatre Looks for RESISTANCE • REVOLUTION • RESURGENCE in 2017-18

Illinois Theatre, the producing arm of the University of Illinois Department of Theatre, has announced the schedule for its 50th anniversary season. Under the theme "Resistance • Revolution • Resurgence," Illinois Theatre will offer Robert Penn Warren's political cautionary tale All the King's Men; followed by Tom Stoppard's Travesties, a "cryptic-crossword of a modern classic" comedy; Sarah Ruhl's funny, sexy and quite moving play In the Next Room, or the vibrator play;the Sondheim/Weidman dark and dangerous musical Assassins, which never seems to go out of style; Twelfth Night, one of Shakespeare's finest; and a provocative new play by Robert O'Hara called Barbecue.

The line-up of topical plays and the inclusion of some exciting new directors makes for a very intriguing season for Illinois Theatre.

This is what their press release has to say about the whys and the wherefores:

"Celebrating 50 years of creating excellence in performance, design, technology, management, and scholarship, Illinois Theatre invites you to join us as we examine themes timely and timeless. Theatre’s powerful exploration of human experience stands as a reminder that great difficulties have been overcome with inquiry, analysis, critique, and persistence—always persistence. Our productions will delve into issues of gender and political corruption; we consider the role of art during the Russian Revolution; we see dawning female sexual consciousness in the Victorian era; we gawk at the twisted dreams festering in a collection of presidential assassins; laugh at the confusions of love, lust and identity in a classic Shakespearean comedy; and experience the cultural difference between two families: one black, one white. This season of plays plumb the depths (and heights) of diverse human experience, and we invite you to join us for a season of laughter, love, pain, and triumph."

And here's more info on the individual plays, including directors and dates:

All the King’s Men
By Robert Penn Warren
Tom Mitchell, director
Illinois Theatre presents the quintessential American political saga of Willie Stark, a charismatic populist who rockets to the Louisiana statehouse and sets his sights on Washington. With an all-female cast, this production depicts the hyper-masculine 1930s backrooms where “good old boys” jockey for power. Robert Penn Warren adapted his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel for the stage and for two film versions.
September 28 to 30 and October 4 to 8, 2017

Travesties
By Tom Stoppard
Robert G. Anderson, director
Vladimir I. Lenin, James Joyce, and artist Tristan Tzara walk into a library—and the world is transformed. Tom Stoppard’s supremely literate comedy—with a wink and a nod to Oscar Wilde—imagines lively encounters between three revolutionaries who changed the world of politics, literature, and art. Presented by Illinois Theatre in association with the "1917/2017: Ten Days That Shook the World/Ten Days That Shake the Campus" initiative.
October 19 to 21 and 26 to 29, 2017

In the Next Room, or the vibrator play
By Sarah Ruhl
Lisa Gaye Dixon, director
In the waning years of the 19th century, the age of electricity enlivens the possibilities for human satisfaction. A path-breaking physician treats the “hysteric” needs of his female patients while overlooking domestic discontent in his own home. Illinois Theatre examines love and marriage, artistic inspiration, and burgeoning female sexuality. Viewed through a blushing comic lens of sexual awakening and desire, audiences will surely find moments of identification, sympathy, and laugh-out-loud acknowledgement. This production is for adult audiences only.
Contains adult content
Oct 26 to 28 and November 1 to 5, 2017

Assassins
Stephen Sondheim, composer and lyricist
John Weidman, librettist
J.W. Morrissette, director
"Murder is a tawdry little crime; it’s born of greed, or lust, or liquor. Adulterers and shopkeepers get murdered. But when a president gets killed, when Julius Caesar got killed...he was assassinated." —John Wilkes Booth to Lee Harvey Oswald in Assassins.
Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Stephen Sondheim and librettist John Weidman take aim at American ideals of prosperity and fortune. Illinois Theatre presents this powerful musical examination of the blood-curdling (and banal) impulses of would-be assassins who pursue their own versions of the American dream.
February 1 to 3 and 7 to 11, 2018

Twelfth Night, or What You Will
By William Shakespeare
Brenda DeVita, guest director
Featuring a shipwreck, lost siblings, false identities, gender confusion, and star-crossed love, this production from Illinois Theatre is sure to excite every aficionado of Shakespeare. Guest director Brenda DeVita, artistic director of the American Players Theatre, has her Krannert Center debut at the helm of this lively, timeless comedy.
March 1 to 3 and 8 to 11, 2018 1-3

Barbecue
By Robert O’Hara
Chuck Smith, guest director
The O’Mallery family gathers in a local park to confront a sibling about her substance abuse. Is it a made-for-reality-television event? Not quite. As the narrative unspools, members of the family attack and retreat. Familiar tropes from domestic dramas give way to startling new revelations as a family’s identity shape-shifts across an evolving landscape of race, class, and consciousness. Illinois Theatre welcomes playwright Robert O’Hara to our community as we produce his exciting new comedy, directed by the Goodman Theatre's Chuck Smith.
Contains adult content
Mar 29 to 31 and April 4 to 8, 2018

For more information, take a look at the Illinois Theatre website or check out their Facebook page.

Humana Festival 2016: Sarah Ruhl's FOR PETER PAN ON HER 70th BIRTHDAY

If there was a marquee event at this year's Humana Festival of New American Plays, it had to be Sarah Ruhl's For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday.

Ruhl is currently at the top of the American playwriting ladder; her In the Next Room, or the vibrator play had a Broadway production with multiple Tony nominations, while Stage Kiss, eurydice, Dead Man's Cell Phone and The Clean House (among others) played Off-Broadway and have subsequently been produced all over the country, including across central Illinois. Ruhl was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant, as well as winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Whiting Award, the Lilly Award and a PEN Award.

When Ruhl came to Louisville for the Humana Festival, her play got Actors Theatre's artistic director, Les Waters, as its director, with an A-list cast, including Kathleen Chalfant, a multiple Tony nominee herself. It doesn't get much better than that.

Kathleen Chalfant in For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday.
Photo Credit: Bill Brymer

So how did her Peter Pan do? In performance, Ruhl's script for Peter Pan showed enough wit to keep it buoyant, a sweet affection for its characters, especially Ann, the one played by Chalfant, and just a shade of sadness. You might expect "I don't want to grow up" as a theme, given the title, and that's definitely there, but it's part of a larger issue, when growing up involves saying goodbye to the generation ahead of us.

It's become something of a running joke that critics inevitably try to find some sort of overall theme for each year's Humana Festival, although the people at Actors Theatre swear they don't pick plays to suit any one idea. This year, American Theatre's Russell M. Dembin touches on the theory that ghosts provided the Festival's throughline. While there were certainly a number of ghosts, for me, confronting mortality emerged as a more pervasive theme, especially within parent/child relationships. That's front and center in For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday, as Ann and her siblings gather to deal with their father's death.

The cast of For Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday.
Photo credit: Bill Brymer

When the play opens, Ann, her sister Wendy, and her brothers Jim, John and Michael sit and wait in their beloved dad's hospital room. Two of Ann's brothers are doctors, as was their father, so they're well aware he doesn't have much time. From there, the play moves to the five of them at the old kitchen table, drinking, reminiscing and arguing during Dad's wake, and then into a sort of dream sequence where each takes on a role in Peter Pan, which Ann starred in as a child.

I don't know how many 70-year-old actresses there are in the world who'd be willing to step into Peter Pan's tights and fly around the stage, but Chalfant is game, as are the younger-but-not-exactly-young Lisa Emery, who plays Wendy, and Scott Jaeck (John), David Chandler (Jim) and Keith Reddin (Michael). The roles they play in Ann's life are reflected in their Peter Pan roles, as well, although the political talking points they hurl at each other and how that sets up Captain Hook in the play-within-a-play come off somewhat forced as a dramatic device.

What was best about the Humana Festival For Peter Pan was, in a word, Chalfant. She had the audience in the palm of her hand from her curtain speech to her flying game, and she made Ruhl's words come alive with the elegance and expertise of her delivery. Looking at the words on the page, I found they don't seem nearly as funny as they did when Kathleen Chalfant was saying them.

Ron Crawford, who played the father they'd all come to honor, also emerged as a major presence in the play, even when he was lying motionless in a hospital bed. His contributions to the second scene -- what Ruhl calls "Movement Two: The Irish Wake" -- were especially well-received, as his timing and wry humor paid off nicely.

Chandler, Emery, Jaeck and Reddin each etched an individual portrait and together with Chalfant, they created a recognizable family dynamic, the kind where being together throws you right back up against the same buttons you've been pushing since you were kids. We don't really ever grow up, after all.

One other strength: A local marching band that came in to cover the scene change between Movements One and Two, playing "When the Saints Go Marching In." It was perfect. Here's hoping other productions will find their own marching bands if For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday pops up in regional theaters.

Eureka College Opens EURYDICE Wednesday Night

Eureka College is becoming the go-to place locally for the plays of Sarah Ruhl. This time, it's Eurydice, Ruhl's 2003 re-imagining of the Greek myth of Eurydice and Orpheus. In the original, as well as in most modern adaptations, the story tends to be all about Orpheus, a musician so talented, so inspired, that when his wife Eurydice dies shortly after their wedding, his mournful singing makes the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus weep along with him. They urge him to travel to the Underworld to retrieve her, and once there, he even convinces Hades, god of the Underworld, to allow it. But Hades sets a condition -- Orpheus can take Eurydice back to the world of the living, but only if he walks ahead and never looks back to make sure she's still there. As in many myths, the temptation is too much, Orpheus turns, and Eurydice is lost to him forever.

What Ruhl brings to the table is a different focus. She sets her story around Eurydice instead of her singing idol husband, showing us her point of view during their wedding, the tragic accident that befalls her, her journey down to Hades and what happens to her there, including reuniting with her father, who passed away years before. When Orpheus comes for her, she has to decide whether she wants to rejoin life in the real world or stay with her beloved dad. It's a whole different story.

Ruhl's script is lyrical and poetic, loaded with emotion as it looks at what it means for Eurydice to be alive and to be dead, to weigh the demands of different kinds of love. It's a challenging play, too, as Ruhl serves up surreal images and strange characters to define her Underworld.

On Wednesday March 2, director Caitlin Herzlinger will bring Ruhl's Eurydice to Pritchard Theatre on the campus of Eureka College for the first of five performances. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday performances begin at 7:30 pm, while the Sunday matinee is set for 2 pm. There is no set price for tickets -- you are invited to pay what you think is best, with all proceeds earmarked for the Heart House of Eureka.

Click here for the Eureka College event page. Email tickets@eureka.edu or call 309-467-6363 to make reservations.

IN THE NEXT ROOM (OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY) Opens Thursday at ISU

Sarah Ruhl has become a major player in American theater over the past few years. Since The Clean House in 2004 -- a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize winner and a Pulitzer finalist -- Ruhl has hit the big time with Eurydice, Passion Play and Dead Man's Cell Phone and In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play), her first play on Broadway. The Vibrator Play was nominated for three Tony Awards, including Best Play, and it, too, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

In each of these plays, Ruhl wraps her poetic, distinctive voice around issues big and small, from love to death, from passion to religion, connection, power, humor and gender politics. Her work is fresh and different, with liberal helpings of fantasy, wit and intelligence and some seriously interesting female characters.

Locally, you could've seen The Clean House at Heartland, Eurydice at the Station Theatre in Urbana, Passion Play in the Center for the Performing Arts at Illinois State University and Dead Man's Cell Phone at Eureka College. Now director David Ian Lee brings In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) to the CPA at ISU, as well, completing the Ruhl picture.

In the Next Room is lighter, both in tone and situation, than some of Ruhl's other works, tackling the invention of the vibrator as a medical device to cure hysteria in women in the 19th century. Ruhl's story isn't fact-based in terms of the real inventor. Instead, it gives us the fictional Dr. Givings, who is a proponent of using this new technology to bring relief to his unhappy patients. This is all for the good of science, you understand, or for therapeutic reasons, not erotic or prurient in the least.

But his own wife is quite curious about what exactly is going on behind the door into his office, curious enough to talk to his patients and even to sneak into his exam room when he's not there to see what the brouhaha is about. In fact, the image of Catherine Givings with her ear pressed to the door graced the cover of the published script.

At its heart, The Vibrator Play is about more than just vibrators. It's about freedom and repression, about taking ownership of one's own body, about loosening both literal and figurative stays.

Grad students Natalie Blackman and Colin Lawrence will play the Givings for ISU, with Allison Sokolowski as Mrs. Daldry, one of Dr. Givings' patients, Graham Gusloff as Mr. Daldry, Dario Carrion as a male patient who also benefits from the good doctor's ministrations, Kelly Steik as the doctor's helpful office assistant, and Brandi Jones as a wet nurse who provides a different point of view when Catherine Givings needs it.

Performances of In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) begin Thursday, October 2 at the ISU Center for the Performing Arts. For more information on all of ISU's upcoming performances, click here. To find out about buying tickets, click here.

What's Ahead on ISU Stages in 2014-15

Illinois State University's Department of Theatre and Dance has announced what will be on stage in the Fall of 2014 and Spring of 2015. And it's an ambitious and intriguing lineup, with lots of new work, lots of female playwrights, and lots of roles for actors of color.

The first play on the schedule will be Sarah Ruhl's funny, provocative take on women, sexuality, and the birth of the vibrator in the 19th century. In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) will be directed for ISU's Center for the Performing Arts by David Ian Lee, an MFA director who earned rave reviews for his production of Perestroika last semester. The Vibrator Play was originally directed by Les Waters, the current Artistic Director at Actors Theatre of Louisville, for Berkeley Rep in California; Waters then took the play to Broadway with a production that starred Laura Benanti and Michael Cerveris and earned Tony nominations for the play, David Zinn's Victorian costume design, and featured actress Maria Dizzia. The play was also a nominee for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Lynn Nottage, the playwright behind By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, also slated for the CPA this Fall, is no stranger to the Pulitzer Prize. Her play, Ruined, was the 2009 winner of that prestigious prize. Vera Stark is more humorous and more lively than Ruined, telling the story of an African-American woman who works as a maid for a Hollywood diva. But then Vera gets a role on screen as a maid -- the maid to her boss's Southern belle in some epic historical romance film -- and the fact that her sparkling performance upstages everybody does not go unnoticed. She had a career. She had suitors. She went to the best parties. So what happened to Vera Stark? Nottage's play is irreverent and a little wacky, and it will serve as the Crossroads production for the season. Don LaCasse is on tap to direct the ISU version of By the Way, Meet Vera Stark.

And here's that Pulitzer word again. The third play on ISU's schedule is a Pulitzer winner from yet another female playwright. Water by the Spoonful is Quiara Alegría Hudes's second play in a three-play series about a soldier named Elliot who has issues when he comes back to the U.S. The first play, Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue, was nominated for a Pulitzer in 2007, while the third Elliot play, The Happiest Song Plays Last, premiered at Chicago's Goodman Theatre last year. Elliot, his cousin, his biological mother and an online circle of recovering addicts populate Water by the Spoonful, a lyrical, innovative play about connections, guilt and forgiveness. Third-year MFA candidate Leah Cassella will direct Water by the Spoonful in Westhoff Theatre.

Going from Quiara Alegría Hudes to Noel Coward is quite a jump. Although Illinois Wesleyan just did Hay Fever last semester, ISU director Sonja Moser is going to go for her own take on the Coward classic. Instead of Spoonful's disconnected cyberworld of 2012, Hay Fever is all about the 1920s during a weekend at an eccentric family's country house. Tennis, anyone? It's lighter than air, fizzy and charming. What in the world will Moser do with it? I guess we'll find out next Fall in Westhoff Theatre!

The last piece of the 2014 puzzle is the annual Fall Dance Concert, under the direction of Sara Semonis, Artistic Director of Illinois Dance Theatre.

As we move into 2015, ISU assistant professor Duane Boutté will bring the Kander and Ebb musical Cabaret, based on the Joe van Druten play I Am a Camera, itself based on Christopher Isherwood's autobiographical novel Goodbye to Berlin, to the Center for the Performing Arts. The original Broadway Cabaret and its decadent view of life in Berlin in the 1930s won eight Tony Awards back in 1967, including Best Musical, Best Composer and Lyricist for John Kander and Fred Ebb, Best Director for Hal Prince and Best Featured Actor for Joel Grey, who played the seedy, scary Emcee. Grey reprised his role and won an Oscar for his role in the 1972 movie directed by Bob Fosse, a film that took home eight Oscars, including Best Director and Best Actress for Liza Minnelli. That's Liza at the top of the heap in the movie poster shown here.

Moving back in time and somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand miles to the east, Anton Chekhov's The Seagull will take the stage at the CPA later in the Spring semester. The Seagull was written in 1895 and its first production was a famous flop. But Stanislavski's 1898 production for the Moscow Art Theatre turned it into a sensation. It's about the interaction and complications between and among a fading actress named Arkadina, her lover Trigorin, who is a writer; her would-be playwright son Treplev; and a young woman named Nina, as well as various other characters who live on the country estate owned by Arkadina's brother Sorin. The Seagull was last performed at Illinois State University as part of the 2004-05 season. This time out, Lori Adams, who heads up the Acting program at ISU, will direct.

Second-year MFA director Jonathan Hunt Sell will twist and (gender-bend) Moliere's classic comedy The School for Wives for Westhoff Theatre, giving Moliere the "Drag and Breeches" treatment with men playing the female roles and women playing the male ones. So the gents will be in dresses -- fancy 17th century French couture -- and the ladies will be in breeches. That should upend and refresh this tale of a creepy guy named Arnolphe and his attempts to keep his innocent ward, Agnes, cooped up and stupid so she won't fall in love and he can marry her himself.

Sell's colleague Jessika Malone, the other second-year MFA candidate in directing, also looks outside the U.S. for her play. She has chosen Selkie: Between Land and Sea, a mystical, mythical Scottish piece by Laurie Brooks, for her Spring production in Westhoff. The legend of the selkie is a cross between a mermaid story and the Swan Princess, with a girl who becomes a seal when in the sea, but a woman when on land. Laurie Brooks has also written a book version of her story, simply called Selkie Girl, and that's the image you see here.

All the details on Illinois State University's schedule will appear here and here once the current season is finished. 

2013 Humana Festival Array of New Plays Announced

As promised, Actors Theatre of Louisville has announced what new plays will be on the schedule for its 2013 Humana Festival of New American Plays next spring.

This time out, there will be full-length plays from Jeff Augustin, Mallery Avidon, Will Eno, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Sam Marks, with a piece created for Actors Theatre's Apprentice Company by Rinne Groff, Lucas Hnath and Anne Washburn. There will also be a program of 10-minute plays, with Sarah Ruhl the only announced playwright so far, since Actors Theatre's 10-minute play competition is still underway and one or more of the other plays may be chosen from that contest.

New Actors Theatre Artistic Director Les Waters will direct Will Eno's play, called Gnit. As you might guess from the name, Gnit is a new take on Peer Gynt, Henrik Ibsen's rambling adventure about a shiftless sort of man who travels around the world, running into a king, dairymaids, trolls, brownies, nixies, gnomes, Bedoins, madmen, missionaries, the Sphinx and the Devil. This Gnit promises to be a "rollicking and very cautionary tale about, among other things, how the opposite of love is laziness."

Appropriate is the title of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' new play, although without hearing it said aloud, I don't know if the piece is supposed to be the adjective appropriate, as in suitable or fitting, as opposed to the verb appropriate, as in, borrow without permission. Given that the play's action begins when the three adult children in the Lafayette family "descend upon a crumbling Arkansan plantation to liquidate their dead patriarch’s estate," I'm going to guess it's the verb appropriate, the one that is just a stone's throw from steal.

Gary Griffin, who is the Associate Artistic Director at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, where he recently directed a phenomenal production of Sunday in the Park with George, will be at the helm of Appropriate, his first directing gig at Actors Theatre.

Meredith McDonough, Actors Theatre's Associate Artistic Director, directs The Delling Shore, Sam Marks' look at competing novelists -- one successful and one struggling -- and their daughters, who also aspire to write. It's really hard not to take sides when push comes to shove, when wordplay becomes just as cutting as knives.

Cry Old Kingdom, about an artist trying to survive in Papa Doc Duvalier's Haiti, marks Jeff Augustin's professional debut as a playwright. It will be directed by Tom Dugdale, recipient of the 2012 Princess Grace Award in Theater with La Jolla Playhouse.

You can probably surmise from the title of Mallery Avidon's O Guru Guru Guru or why I don’t want to go to yoga class with you that it involves yoga or the lack thereof. Directed by Lila Neugebauer, O Guru Guru is a "disarming look at the precarious process of becoming yourself." Whether that means yoga or not.

The subject matter of the apprentice showcase, conceived by Amy Attaway and Sarah Lunnie, directed by Attaway, and penned by Rinne Groff, Lucas Hnath and Anne Washburn, is also apparent from the title. Sleep Rock Thy Brain is about... Sleep! Or at least the "rich complexities of the sleeping brain," explored through science, spectacle and theatrical invention.

Last year's apprentice piece was about food, and we got brownies on the way out. Maybe this year, they'll give us pillows. That would be exciting.

The Humana Festival, which is supported and sponsored by the Humana Foundation, begins February 27 and runs through April 7, 2013. Various packages and weekend deals are available for different audiences throughout that time period, with specific information on who goes when here.

Passion, Politics and Religion at Play in ISU's "Passion Play"

There is a lot of passion in Sarah Ruhl's "Passion Play" on stage at ISU's Center for the Performing Arts. Not just The Passion of the Christ, which you might expect, but passion among actors, directors, crew, politicians, visitors, rivals, all surrounding how a village and its villagers -- in rural England under Elizabeth I, Oberammergau during Hitler's reign, and Spearfish, SD in the late 20th century -- put on a show about the last week in the life of Jesus Christ. There are lovers, friends, cousins, brothers, sisters, all struggling to find a way put on a play.

I love Ruhl's writing, and "Passion Play" is some of her best, at times poetic in the slightly warped way she does so well, at times funny or sad or moving or provocative, but always as elusive as it is intriguing. As Ruhl examines how people's lives relate to religion in terms of wanting guidance from above, trying hard not to waver, twisting piety for political or social gain, or wielding mighty weapons in the name of faith, she looks at the connection between religion and politics, as well as between religion and theater. There is, in fact, a lot about theater and the people who create it in this play. Ruhl is not above pointing out the foibles of theater people anymore than clergymen or kings.

These are big issues, and Ruhl gives each era and its characters a full act to tell their chapter of the story. At Illinois State, under the direction of Brandon Ray, the play is quite long. There's no getting around that. On opening night, it ran at about 4 hours and 15 minutes, right up there in "Gone With the Wind," "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and "Angels in America" territory. There were definitely times when the pace lapsed a little, when it seemed there were a few too many set pieces to move or costume changes or entrances or exits to wait for, but mostly, the time was well spent on the depth of Ruhl's vision, with some terrific character work from ISU's undergraduate actors and some absolutely beautiful stage pictures courtesy of scenic designer John C. Stark and lighting designer Julie Mack.

The script asks for stage magic, and in this "Passion Play," it absolutely gets it.

It also asks a lot of its actors, who play different people, albeit people who are cast in the same roles in each of the three Passion Plays within Ruhl's "Passion Play." Matt Bausone is especially good as three men slated to play Pontius Pilate. His first character is a physically twisted little fish-gutter who hates his cousin, the one who plays Jesus, the second is a confident Nazi soldier in love with the man playing Jesus, and the third is a man who goes off to Vietnam and comes back severely damaged by the experience, leaving his brother, who plays Jesus, safe at home. Bausone makes each Pontius different, but all three compelling, especially #3, making for a lovely, stirring final image to the play.

Jeff Kurysz is all three of the Jesus actors, one pious and distant, one timid and unsure, and the last a bit arrogant and selfish. I liked him best as the second one, the dutiful son and sweet lover who wants to do the right thing, but makes the absolute wrong choice in the chilling conclusion to Act II. His pompous actor in Act III has his moments, as well.

I also enjoyed Ashlyn Hughes' trio of crazy girls; they're called Village Idiot #1, Village Idiot #2 and Violet, but they function something like Shakespearean fools, and costume designer Tyler Wilson has even given her a clown-like motley outfit in Act III. Hughes is very effective as the little voice -- always the outsider -- who pops up out of nowhere at inconvenient times.

Clayton Joyner and Caitlin Boho are the two Marys in the piece (the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene) and they're both effective, especially in the Elizabethan section of the play, where they are given the most to do.

Others of note in the cast include Owais Ahmed as a cheery visiting Englishman writing a book about theater in the German section; Carlos Kmet doing a Leonardo turn as an Italian man who can make people fly in 1575; and David Fisch, whose Queen Elizabeth costume has to be seen to be believed and whose Ronald Reagan is a little too reminiscent of the real one for my taste.

Sarah Ruhl's "Passion Play" is not the Passion Play, but three small, human, flawed Passion Plays of its own. Yes, it asks a lot of its audience, and yes, I hope the cast and crew can find their way to trimming 20 minutes or so off its running time, but it's worth the wait and well worth your attention.

PASSION PLAY
By Sarah Ruhl

Illinois State University
Center for the Performing Arts

Director: Brandon Ray
Scenic Designer: John C. Stark
Costume Designer: Tyler Wilson
Hair and Makeup Designer: Wendy Wallace
Lighting Designer: Julie Mack
Composer and Sound Designer: Jason Tucholke
Dramaturges: Ianthe Dempsey, Janelle Melgaard, Sarah Salazar
Dialect and Voice Coach: Lori Adams
Fight Director: Tony Pellegrino
Stage Manager: Hanna Supanich-Winter

Cast: Matt Bausone, Jeff Kurysz, Clayton Joyner, Caitlin Boho, Owais Ahmed, Ashlyn Hughes, Keith Jackewicz, Frank Huber, Brody Murray, Carlos Kmet, David Fisch, Kyle McClevey, Nick Villareal-Lindmark, Deirdre McNulty, Kayla Stroner, Hisako Sugeta.

Remaining Performances: February 22, 23 and 24 at 7 pm; February 19 at 4 pm and February 25 at 4 pm.

Running time: 4:15 with two 10-minute intermissions

For ticket information, click here.

An Early Look at "Passion Play," Upcoming at ISU's CPA

I like Sarah Ruhl's writing in general. She's a little weird and a little wacky, but she manages to bring together disparate elements like love, romance, belief, fate, and yes, passion in a very creative package. The ideas are practically bouncing off the walls in her plays.

"Passion Play" is one of her best, if also one of the most dense and complicated. There is a lot going on here, both in terms of characters and the magical, sad, funny, strange world around them. And director Brandon Ray is doing his best to mine those depths and bring all the magic to the stage at ISU's Center for the Performing Arts beginning Friday.

The "passion" in this "Passion Play" is about the life (and specifically, the suffering) of Jesus, referring to the Passion Plays that have been happening since the 15th century, when regular old folks (not actors, in other words, but carpenters and fishermen and girls next door) put on dramatic presentations to tell the story of Jesus's trial, crucifixion and resurrection.

“I’ve been obsessed with the Passion play since I was a child,” Ms. Ruhl told the New York Times. “Maybe it was being raised a Catholic, but I was definitely also interested in how whole towns would get involved, or religiosity could be used as a cloak for other things. In that sense my play is much more about theater than it is about religion.”

Ruhl takes her "Passion Play" narrative across about four hundred years, showing us how they put on the play in an English village in 1575, with a visit from Queen Elizabeth; in Oberammergau Germany in 1934 with Hitler on the rise; and finally in a backwater town called Spearfish, South Dakota during Viet Nam and then the Reagan years. The script specifies that the same actors will play different characters in those three eras, but continue to play the same roles in the play-within-the-play. If that sounds complicated, it doesn't come off that way in the script. For example, for ISU, actor Matt Bausone plays a misshapen, smelly fish-gutter named Pontius in Elizabethan England. Pontius is set to play Pontius Pilate (obviously) and Satan in the play, and he is jealous of his handsome, pious cousin John, played by Jeff Kurysz, who will take the role of Jesus, as his father did before him. In the next section, set in Germany in 1934, Bausone plays a foot soldier in Hitler's army, one who is suppressing his feelings for Eric, another handsome man cast as Christ in the pageant, again played by Kurysz. And in the third act, with Kurycz as J, yet again set to play Christ, Bausone's character is P, a tortured Viet Nam vet who is having trouble keeping himself together long enough to make it to the play. Bausone plays three different characters -- fish-gutter, soldier, vet -- in the three different eras, but they're all cast as Pontius Pilate in their respective Passion Plays.

Photo credit: Alex K

Ruhl's soaring imagination and sharp sense of humor are on display throughout "Passion Play," and Ray's scenic designer, John Stark, is clearly matching that quirky mood, as you can see from the "paint day" pictures, with a crew member taking a break on the beautiful painted backdrop (below), and a view of the cross as it was being built (above) that plays such an important role in the Passion Plays within this "Passion Play."

Photo credit: Alex K

You should be aware, however, that you will not see an actual Passion Play in any of the three eras. All three sets of would-be actors and stage crews struggle to find a way to overlook or even improve on their own human frailties in order to tell this story that is so important to them. And they pretty much screw it up every time.

"Passion Play" is not a short play, and you can expect performances at the Center for the Performing Arts to take in excess of three hours, with two short intermissions. Sometimes a story is too big for the current 100-minutes-with-no-intermission model. "Passion Play" is one of those plays. Its theatrical scale and thematic scope require no less.

The play opens on Friday, February 17th, with a 7 pm performance. Subsequent performances are scheduled for February 18 and 19 and 22, 23, 24 and 25. For all the details or to order tickets, click here or here.

Very Warm for February

Yes, February is here, whether we like it or not. It's certainly coming in as a nicer February than last year, when we were in the midst of the Snowpocalypse. I'll take Very Warm for February, thanks.

First up in February: The Black Actors Guild at ISU presents "Purlie Victorious," also known as "Gone Are the Days!" with screenings in Milner Library Room 164D on February 1 and 6 at 7 pm. This 1963 movie, with a screenplay by Ossie Davis adapted from his stage play, stars Davis himself as Reverend Purlie Victorious Judson, who returns to the Southern plantation where he grew up, with his fiancee (played by Ruby Dee, Davis's real-life wife) in tow, hoping to build a church and by hook or by crook pry an inheritance out of a bigoted plantation owner (Sorrell Booke, known from "The Dukes of Hazzard") and his more progressive son (Alan Alda, in his first film role).

The Sondheim/Furth musical "Company" opens the month for the Station Theatre, bringing bachelor Bobby and his search for emotional connection back to Urbana from February 2 to 18. Featuring the soaring"Being Alive" as well as the comedy showstopper "Getting Married Today," "Company" is a very entertaining, thought-provoking show. Are friends enough, or does everybody need a partner? Is anybody better off alone? How do you get beyond being "Sorry/Grateful"? Karma Ibsen-Riley directs "Company" for the Station, with Debra Dobbs as Musical Director.

"The Last Days of Judas Iscariot" also opens February 2, in the Studio Theatre inside the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in Urbana. It's a courtroom drama set somewhere in Purgatory, with Judas and his lawyer petitioning for mercy and a ride out of Hell. Read more about this Stephen Adly Guirgis play and the U of I Department of Theatre production here.

"Tartuffe," the Moliere classic that punctures pomposity and religious hypocrisy, will take the stage at Illinois Wesleyan's McPherson Theatre February 14 to 18 at 8 pm and February 19 at 2 pm. Professor of Theatre Arts Nancy Loitz directs "Tartuffe" for IWU. It's a popular choice for college theaters (I think I saw one at ISU just a few years ago, and one at U of I a few years before that) but always good for a laugh, too. Who doesn't like to see a phony baloney religious leader, who pretends to be a paragon of spiritual virtues while he's really filled with lust and greed, brought down? To see that, you can either watch the news or go see "Tartuffe" at IWU.

Heartland Theatre gears up for 2012 with Theresa Rebeck's "Mauritius," which Rebeck has described as a play about, ""Betrayal and treason and poor behavior. A lot of poor behavior.” This little drama involves stamps from the island nation of Mauritius that were printed wrong in 1847. Because of the mistake, the stamps are incredibly valuable, and they may just have shown up in a stamp album left to two sisters when their mother passed away. Which sister really owns the album and the Mauritius stamps? Which of the three men -- a stamp store owner, a wheeler dealer and a greedy collector -- who desperately want the stamps will prevail in the game of cat-and-mouse they all begin to take control? "Mauritius" is directed by Sandi Zielinski and stars Sarah Stone Innerst, Andrew Head, Michael Pullin, Nancy Sultan and Kevin Paul Wickart in the Heartland Theatre production, which opens February 16 and runs through March 4.

Sarah Ruhl has been a hot playwright for a while now, and she's only getting hotter. "Passion Play," a sweeping and yet intimate play about three different incarnations of the traditional Passion Play, one in medieval England, one in Oberammergau, Germany, with Hitler in power, and the last in South Dakota during the Reagan years, comes to ISU's Center for the Performing Arts February 17-25, with a cast that includes Owais Ahmed, Matt Bausone, Caitlin Boho, David Fisch, Frank Huber, Ashlyn Hughes, Keith Jackewicz, Clayton Joyner, Carlos Kmet, Jeff Kurysz and Brody Murray. Click here for my previous piece which includes a more detailed description of the play, or here for ticket information about ISU's production.

If you're trying to catch up with Oscar-nominated movies before February 26, when the Academy Awards show airs on ABC, you have quite a few options. Yes, some of the films have already left theaters, but Comcast On Demand is offering quite a few of them ("Beginners," "Bridesmaids," "The Help," "The Ides of March," "Midnight in Paris, "Moneyball," "The Tree of Life," and "Warrior," at the time I checked.) Otherwise, "Hugo" and "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" are playing at the Starplex Normal Stadium," "The Descendants" is still showing in three first-run movie theaters in B-N, "War Horse," "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" and "The Artist" are at the Wehrenberg Bloomington Galaxy, and "The Artist" is also on screen at the Art Theater over in Champaign. If you want to see "The Artist" in an older theater that dovetails nicely with the plot of the movie, the Art is your best shot. And if you want to see "Hugo" in an older movie theater that dovetails nicely with the plot, our very own Normal Theater can make your dreams come true. "Hugo" will air on the Normal Theater's wonderful big screen February 23-26.

The Normal Theater is also showcasing Oscar's favorite short films from 2011, with programs of the nominated Documentary Shorts February 14 and 15, Live Action Shorts February 16 and 17, and Animated Shorts on the 18th and 19th. I've seen one of the Animated Shorts, and that one alone was so lovely I think I'm going to have to go see the whole bunch. The one I saw was called "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore," created by William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg. If you'd like to know what's nominated in those categories (as well as all the others), you may click here.

And on the local front, the Vale Community Players at Vale Community Church in Bloomington will present "Seasons of Love" February 23 and 24. I don't have a whole lot of info about this production, but it popped up as a Facebook page, so I know they're out there somewhere.