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28 • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
WEDNESDAY, JULY 9, 2003
THEATER
University Theatre to perform graduate's award-winning play
By Amy Kelly akelly@kansan.com Kansan staff writer
A Broadway baby will be celebrating its golden anniversary in the Heartland.
This year marks the 50th year of performances for William Inge's Picnic, which the University Theatre will perform next week in Murphy Hall's Crafton-Preyer Theatre.
Inge, a 1935 University of Kansas graduate of speech and drama, earned a Pulitzer Prize and the New York Critics Circle Award for Picnic, a comedy that debuted on Broadway in 1953.
Set in a small Kansas town on Labor Day weekend, Picnic revolves around the romantic eruptions and disruptions that occur when a handsome, young drifter named Hal arrives.
University graduate Hannah Ballou choreographed the show and plays the role of Millie, a young girl who Hal eventually beckons out of a tomboy phase.
Ballou said the passions explored in Picnic were still pertinent to today's audiences.
PICNIC
Picnic will be performed on July 11,12 18 and 19 at 7:30 p.m.Tickets are $12 for the public,$10 for college and high school students, $11 for senior citizens and $6 for children 5 through 12. To purchase tickets, call the University Theatre at 864-3982.
Zach Straus/Kansan
"It's worth the trip to the theater to mull over your own emotional connections and relationships," said Ballou, who added that she cried every time she saw the final scene. "They are bright as fire in this play."
"Millie," played by Hannah Ballou, Topeka senior, during a rehearsal of William Inge's Picnic, reveals that she has feelings for "Alan," played by Andrew York, Wichita junior. The rehearsal, held Monday night, was in preparation for the play's opening on July 11th in the Crafton-Preyer Theatre in Murphy Hall.
Although Picnic focuses on the timeless subject of romantic relationships, director Jack Wright, professor of theater, said the cast needed to research the 1950s setting to understand the era's mood and state of mind.
Even with the nostalgic overtones, Wright said many of the scenes could easily depict contemporary events. When the character of Madge fell in love with Hal over the course of a few days, Wright said parents today would probably not have a
hard time relating.
"Young kids who run off, get married and say,'Screw the parents'—none of that has changed." Wright said.
Inge based his play on his mother's boarding house in which three women who worked as school teachers lived together without male companionship. Inge, who died in 1973 of an apparent suicide, said his boyhood observations taught him about longing.
"I began to sense the sorrow and the emptiness in their lives and it touched me," Inge said in a biography published on the William Inge Theatre Festival Web site www.ingefestival.org.
—Edited by Jennifer Wellington