Fans of the performing arts need look no further than the University Theatre this fall for entertaining and thought-provoking dramatic works. Upcoming plays run the gamut from Pulitzer Prize-winning masterworks to brand new plays by local playwrights.
The Robinson Theatre season opens with Tony Kushner’s Angels in America — Part Two: Perestroika, playing Nov. 2, 3, 9, 10, 15, 16 and 17 at 8 p.m. and Nov. 11 at 2 p.m. Angels in America is set in the 1980s and overlaps, among others, stories of a gay man dying of AIDS who discovers he is a prophet, and a Mormon couple dealing with Valium addiction and latent homosexuality. The story is rounded out by drag queens, bleeding heart liberals and bickering angels as fantasy, reality and history all blend together.
“I am interested in what this play means now that we have a historical distance from 1985-86, the worst years of governmental indifference and rising death tolls and cultural paranoia,” said theater professor and Perestroika’s director John Schmor.
Last spring, University Theatre staged Angels in America — Part One: Millennium Approaches, and will revive that production in the fall in conjunction with Perestroika.
Rich Brown, a graduate student in theater arts and Perestroika cast member said the play is “about America during the Reagan years, which means, politically, it’s about America today.”
Running Nov. 15, 16 and 17, the Second Season opener is “New Voices,” a night of theater consisting of two short plays written by two theater students selected from a contest held last spring. The first play, Ian Appel’s “Peephole,” is an one-part tragic and comedic play about an existentialist pizza delivery boy and an already tenuous couple in the midst of what may or may not be the Second Coming, and the media hype associated therein.
The second play is “Leaving Shallot” by Alexander Pawlowski, a story about two people from difficult backgrounds who feel a connection to each other unlike any they’ve felt before.
“Basically, it’s a love story between two people who don’t know how to love,” Pawlowski said. “A man and woman meet in a bar and it follows the amounts of emotional baggage that each person carries with them.”
Second Season shows are produced in the Arena Theatre, Room 104 in Villard Hall. Ticket prices are $6 for the general public, $5 for seniors, University faculty, staff and non-University students and $4 for University students. Mainstage shows are presented in the Robinson Theatre, located adjacent to Villard Hall. Tickets are $12 for the general public, $9 for seniors, University faculty, staff and non-University students and $5 for University students.
University Theatre opens new season with ‘Angels’
Daily Emerald
September 16, 2001
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