For free or not for free? That is the question left up to students this year, as the University Theatre Department experiments with a new admission policy.
On top of their five plays and musical performances set for the main stages this year, the theatre department is excited to announce an opportunity unique to the 2011-2012 season: free admission to every performance for all University students.
“This is our pilot year,” department-head John Schmor said to freshmen and others interested in the theatre program at last week’s Week of Welcome meeting. “If the audience goes up demonstrably, the ASUO will continue to fund us.”
The idea of free admission, first proposed by ASUO senator Evan Thomas, became possible for the department when a committee teamed up with Schmor and agreed to grant funding for the 2011-2012 season, in hopes of encouraging greater student attendance.
The free student admission, granted simply by arriving at the box office to get a hand stamp an hour before the performance, allows students the chance to see five plays on the main stage this school year: October’s “Bat Boy,” January’s “Awake and Sing!” March’s “The Crucible,” April’s “Arabian Nights” and May’s “I Ain’t Yo’ Uncle.”
“Bat Boy,” a musical already in rehearsal, tells the story of a boy who is half boy and half bat — with bat-like ears and heightened senses — and follows his experiences when he is discovered in a cave and brought into a town to live with other humans. It is considered “quirky” compared to other musicals, according to Schmor, who is directing the production.
“(Bat Boy) is a really fun, rollicking rock musical, and I expect that it’s going to be absolutely phenomenal. It’s going to be a big spectacle,” Maddy Weatherhead, a junior theatre major who has been involved in various productions at the theatre department for the past year, said.
Following “Bat Boy” will be “Awake and Sing!” this January, as well as “The Crucible” this March. “Awake and Sing!,” directed by graduate student Diamond Morris, marks the shift to a more serious play set during the Great Depression. Auditions will be open to all students on Oct. 8. Closely following will be “The Crucible,” a historical drama about the Salem Witch Trials, which will be directed by Theresa May.
April will welcome new faculty member Michael Najjar to the stage, who will be putting his specialty in Arabian-American theater to use when he directs classic stories and folktales in “Arabian Nights”. This production will be closely followed in May by “I Ain’t Yo’ Uncle,” directed by another faculty member new to the department, LaDonna Forsgren. An African-American theater specialist, Forsgren will reportedly cast five men and four women to play the 24 characters in the story, which is a subversion of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Placing Stowe on trial for her racist portrayals of characters, the characters of “I Ain’t Yo’ Uncle” retell the story of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” from their own point of view, according to Forsgren, who was also at the Week of Welcome meeting.
Apart from these main stage performances, the department also hosts a number of productions at the University’s Pocket Playhouse, which features smaller and often original performances, such as the upcoming “Peppermint Mocha,” written by University senior Phillip Morton.
“We are really wanting students to make attending live theater — and, for that matter, live dance and live music — a part of their cultural social life,” Schmor said.
“We want people to come to see plays and get used to liking that. In this age with television and YouTube and all that, the live experience is just different and it’s something we want to cultivate.”