FAULT LINES and the Dark Comedy in Disaster Relief Tomorrow at IWU

Playwright Ali Taylor is an up-and-comer in England and Scotland, but not so much performed in the United States. When his play Fault Lines opens tomorrow night at Illinois Wesleyan University's Lab Theatre, it will be the first time we've seen Ali Taylor's work hereabouts.

Taylor's voice is fresh, irreverent and funny, even as he tackles big, tough subjects like homelessness in his play Cathy, the desperation and anxiety of teenagers adrift in the world in Cotton Wool and Overspill, and the commercialization and competition involved in running an organization supposedly devoted to humanitarian aid in Fault Lines, which premiered at the Hampstead Theatre in London in 2013.

There are only four characters in Fault Lines, and they all work for Disaster Relief, a group that sees Oxfam, the real-life international aid group, as its biggest rival. The play takes place the morning after Disaster Relief's blow-out Christmas party, when Abi and Nick wake up in a tent pitched in the middle of the office. Their Christmas party antics -- and too much alcohol -- sent them into the tent for a little sexual revelry last night that they are now finding awkward to handle. But their Morning After is interrupted by an intern, Ryan, who announces there's been a new disaster -- a massive earthquake in Pakistan -- that Disaster Relief will have to address. They'll need to act quickly to get the jump on Oxfam and get the best press. Oh, and Pat, an older, more uptight member of the Disaster Relief staff, is arriving any minute, upping the pressure to get things done NOW.

There is competition between Abi and Nick to be the one who locates supplies for Pakistan first, as well as to outwit and outmaneuver Oxfam, and to meet the super-quick deadline Pat gives them. But nothing is as clear-cut as it seems when being No. 1 is more important than actually helping anyone. As the play's press materials put it, Fault Lines is "a razor-sharp new comedy that exposes the dilemmas of working in charity today and asks whether doing good is always the same as being good."

Considering just how many national and international disasters keep knocking us off our pins and how we judge the response from organizations like the fictional Disaster Relief, Fault Lines couldn't possibly be any more timely.

For Illinois Wesleyan's School of Theatre Arts, department head Tom Quinn directs a cast that includes Morgan McCane as Abi, Braden Tanner as Nick, Emily Strub as Pat, and Andrea Froehlke as Ryan.

Fault Lines plays for only three performances in the E. Melba Kirkpatrick Lab Theatre, from October 27 to 28, with all performances at 8 pm. Tickets for Lab Theatre shows are $3 for the general public and $2 for students. Visit this page or call the IWU box office at 309-556-3232 for more information.

Coming Soon: 2017 Illinois Shakespeare Festival Opportunities & Options

If it's almost summer, it's almost time for the Illinois Shakespeare Festival. If you haven't purchased tickets yet, there's still time to choose single seats or a season pass. And a call just went out for volunteer ushers, which may also get you in to see the show.

Here's the scoop on what's happening this summer:

A Midsummer Night's Dream is up first with a preview performance on June 28 and official opening night on the 30th. After that, you'll find 16 more performances in the theater at Ewing Manor through August 11. This Midsummer is directed by Robert Quinlan, head of the MFA directing program at Illinois State University. Quinlan's previous Illinois Shakespeare Festival credits include Richard II and Macbeth. Festival favorite Tom Quinn leads the cast as Bottom, with Jordan Coughtry as Puck, Thom Miller as Oberon, Nisi Sturgis as Titania, and Jesse Bhamrah, Susie Parr, Raffeal A. Sears and Emily Wold as the four Athenian lovers lost in the forest.

Next on the agenda is not just any Cymbeline but an adaptation for six actors created by Chris Coleman called Shakespeare's Amazing Cymbeline. The ensemble consists of Coughtry, Miller, Quinn, Sears and Sturgis and Patrick Toon, under the direction of Andy Park, who also directed Peter and the Starcatcher and Failure: A Love Story in Festivals past. The preview for Amazing Cymbeline happens on June 29, with performances on stage at Ewing Theater from July 1 to August 12.

The Q Brothers return to the Festival with I Heart Juliet, "bringing their incredible energy, humor, and hip-hop verse to Shakespeare’s timeless masterpiece, Romeo & Juliet." You might've seen the Q Brothers' take on Two Gentleman of Verona called Q Gents back in 2015. This time, ISF Artistic Director Kevin Rich is at the helm with a cast that includes the Q Brothers Collective (GQ, JQ, Jax and Pos) and ten members of the Festival company. I Heart Juliet opens July 9 in Westhoff Theatre on the ISU campus, continuing at Westhoff till August 8. For all the details, click here.

If you're wondering who's who on the design team this year, look for Joe C. Klug as scenic designer for all three shows, with Dan Ozminkowski as lighting designer and Kieran Pereira in charge of sound design. Splitting up costume design duties, Nicholas Hartman will conceive the wardrobe for Amazing Cymbeline, Christina Leinicke for I Heart Juliet and Tyler Wilson for Midsummer.

In addition to these three shows, you'll have five chances to see The Improvised Shakespeare Company and Wednesday and Saturday morning performances of the fairytale Sleeping Beauty under the Theater for Young Audiences umbrella.

And about that volunteer usher opportunity... You can wear what you want, pick your dates (with some flexibility), and even see the show for free, as long as seats are available. Read more about it here. If ushering sounds like something you'd enjoy, contact ISF House Manager Dave Hansen at dlhans1@ilstu.edu.

IWU School of Theatre Arts Announces 2016-17 Season

Illinois Wesleyan University's School of Theatre and Dance has announced their 2016-17 schedule for the Jerome Mirza Theatre in McPherson Hall. Details on lab productions will come later, but for right now, here's what IWU has on the horizon:

Dead Man's Cell Phone, Sarah Ruhl's surreal and funny look at mortality and human connection in our  technologically fragmented world, will lead off the season, directed by Dani Snyder-Young in performance October 4 to 9, 2016. Ruhl's play won the Helen Hayes award for Outstanding New Play for its Washington DC premiere at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in 2007. A well-regarded production at New York's Playwrights Horizons followed in 2008, with Mary-Louise Parker as Jean, the woman who picks up a ringing cell phone next to a dead man in a cafe and starts an odyssey to find out who he was and what it all means. In his review in the New York Times, Charles Isherwood says, "[I]t is the act of answering a phone that draws Jean into the mysteries of life, death and the varieties of love, from the compassion for a stranger that an overheard conversation can evoke to the continuing challenge of romantic intimacy."

In November, Scott Susong will direct The Boys from Syracuse, a Rodgers and Hart musical adaptation of The Comedy of Errors. Broadway legend George Abbott wrote the book of this zany musical comedy about two sets of twins separated as babies and all the hijinks that ensue when they're all in the same place at the same time but unaware they have mirror images. Abbott produced and directed the show in its Broadway premiere, with another legend -- George Balanchine -- as choreographer. Songs include "Sing for Your Supper" and "Falling in Love with Love." The Boys from Syracuse opened on Broadway in 1938 with a cast that included Green Acres' Eddie Albert and Illinois's own Burl Ives, star of song, stage and screen. (You may remember him as the voice of Sam the Snowman in the animated classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, where he sang "A Holly Jolly Christmas," or as Big Daddy in the film version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  He won an Academy Award for his performance in The Big Country.)  The 2002 Broadway revival at the Roundabout featured a new book by playwright Nicky Silver, with Lee Wilkof and Chip Zien as the two Dromios. The Boys from Syracuse is scheduled to run at the Jerome Mirza Theatre from November 15 to 20, 2016.

Arthur Miller's perennial favorite The Crucible will take the Mirza stage in March, directed by Tom Quinn, with guest Equity actor David Kortemeier brought in to play the role of Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth. On its face, Miller's Crucible is about the Salem witch trials, with proud Salem resident John Proctor trying to stand firm as growing hysteria threatens his household and his neighbors. The Crucible was written in 1953, putting it smack-dab in the middle of the witch hunt conducted by Senator Joseph McCarthy under the guise of rooting out Communists in the United States. After his play came out, Arthur Miller was himself questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Coincidentally, so was then-folk singer Burl Ives. (Miller refused to talk, but Ives named names and made a lot of enemies in the folk community.) Look for The Crucible at Illinois Wesleyan University March 7 to 12, 2017.

IWU's 2016-17 season finishes up with the Faculty Choreographed Dance Concert, directed by Sheri Marley, from April 18 to 2, 2017.

Information on the schedule for the E. Melba Johnson Kirkpatrick Laboratory Theatre will be filled in later. For more details, contact the McPherson Box Office at 309-556-3232.

It's Noir Before the Dawn in AS YOU LIKE IT at IWU

Shakespeare's As You Like It starts in France, at the court ruled by the usurping Duke Frederick. He's a bad guy, keeping his daughter Celia on a short leash and acting all menacing to her cousin, Rosalind, the daughter of the rightful duke.

To portray the decadent duchy, director Tom Quinn makes Illinois Wesleyan University's current production all shadowy and noir, a vision of urban American in the early 40s, the land of The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Big Sleep (1946), where thugs wearing Fedoras do their dirty work in dark alleys and snazzy nightclubs.

That's certainly atmospheric, turning Duke Frederick into a kind of hard-boiled Dick Powell character, with Celia and Rosalind dames in high heels not unlike the Jane Greers and Joan Powells of yesteryear, and Touchstone the clown turned into a Joe E. Lewis style nightclub comic.

But once Roz and Celia go on the lam to the Forest of Arden, we lose the noir feel, instead inhabiting a free-wheeling rural landscape where the temperature is cold but the company is warm. With music and food and furs wrapped around our exiled heroes, the dark mood lifts, the season moves from winter to spring, everybody starts getting frisky, and love is in the air. Rosalind meets up with her Orlando, Touchstone romances a local lass named Audrey, and Celia even gets a late-in-the-day suitor.

Geena Barry makes a lovely Rosalind for IWU, looking just as fetching in her boys' cap and trousers as she does in the opening cocktail dress. She matches up well with Ben Mulgrew, a more boyish Orlando than most, and their faux-wooing comes off very sweet and charming.

Elaina Henderson gives Celia a lot of personality, as well, and T. Isaac Sherman shows both sides of the Dick Powell persona, giving Duke Frederick the hard guy Powell from Murder My Sweet and Duke Senior the warm, nice guy Powell from Susan Slept Here or Christmas in July.

Jacques, the gloomy philosopher with the Seven Ages of Man speech, gets a lighter touch from Ian Scarlato, who seems to be playing for laughs in his interaction with Touchstone, here played by Will Henke as a light-footed jokester in a porkpie hat.

In the ensemble, Kate Rozycki, Maggie Sheridan, Mandi Corrao and Will Greenlee do good work adding a certain wild musical streak to the proceedings. That echoes Quinn's director's notes about the wilderness within as represented by the Forest of Arden.

Overall, this is a warm, fun As You Like It, one that looks good and moves well, with lovers and lunatics at every turn.

AS YOU LIKE IT
by William Shakespeare

Illinois Wesleyan University School of Theatre Arts
McPherson Theatre

Director: Thomas Quinn
Scenic Designer: Curtis C. Trout
Costume Designers: Mariah Williamson
Lighting Designer: Stephen Sakowski
Sound Designer: Aaron Woodstein

Cast: Geena Barry, Elaina Henderson, T. Isaac Sherman, Ben Mulgrew, Zachary Wagner, Adam Wallaser, Debra Madans, Marek Zurowski, Zach Mahler, Will Henke, Kate Rozycki, Ian Scarlato, Elliott Plowman, Briana Sarikcioglu, Angela Jos, Joey Chu, Nick Castellanos, Mandi Corrao, Maggie Sheridan, Will Greenlee.

Remaining performances: February 28 and March 1-2 at 8 pm

Running time: 2:40, including one 15-minute intermission

For ticket information, click here.