University Daily Kansan
Wednesday, Sept. 30, 1970
7
Two Student Productions Open Experimental Season
By MELISSA BERG Kansan Reviewer
The University of Kansas Experimental Theatre Series will open its season tonight with two new one-act plays written by KU students.
The first of these bears the unwieldy title of "The Uncomfortable Circumstances Surrounding the Letting of the Back Bed-Sitting Room." An adaptation of the novella "Metamorphosis," by Franz Kafka, the play was written by
Billi Dawn Schoggen, Lomira,
Wis., graduate student, Francine
Francine Casassa, Fitchburg Mass., graduate student will direct the production.
The play centers on Gregor Samsa who wakes up one morning to find he has become a beetle. Although he thinks as a human, he moves like an insect.
A young, sensitive, responsible man who for years has supported his family and cared for their needs, Gregor is shown being
gradually destroyed because of the selfishness of his family and friends and his own misguided sense of guilt.
According to Mrs. Casassa,
"The play will be presented in a
mode which is neither real nor
arts & reviews
Prison Setting of Play Adapts for Many Scenes
By BECKY CHITISTER
Kansan Staff Writer
A prison—a common cell where 30 people await together their separate fates. Lodging for thieves, cutthroats, gutter whores and, yes, even a courtly gentleman, where games are played and dreams are lived.
The stage for the University Theatre production of "Man of La Mancha" is unusual in that it becomes many places; a church, an inn, a countryman's home; and yet it remains a prison throughout the play. It is the setting for a play-within-a-play.
Greg Hill, Kansas City, Mo., senior, designed the stage for the University Theatre production of "Man of La Mancha," to be presented Oct. 9-11 and 16-18.
Rea said, "A lot of places that have done this play followed the original and used a raked floor."
Thomas Rea, associate professor of speech and drama and the play's director, said Hill's design followed the original designed for the New York production by Howard Bay. Bay was responsible for setting, lighting and costumes when the play was first presented in 1965 at the Washington Square Theatre in New York City.
A stone wall rises along the sides and back of the set. Atop the back wall a large arch built on a platform forms a door from which a staircase is raised and lowered, giving the further appearance of a dungeon.
The setting is a dungeon. Miguel De Cervantes has been thrown into the dungeon to await trial on a charge of heresy. The other prisoners set up a mock trial to determine his punishment.
Grates are raised from the floor for various scenes. In one,
Cervantes calls himself a poet, a playwright and an actor. When he is told to account for his life he finds he can explain nothing except through his dreams. He calls upon the other prisoners to help him with his story. His trunks containing actors' costumes were lowered into the dungeon with him. He has his manuscript in his hands—it is his life's work.
Cervantes' dream, his manuscript, is the story of Don Quixote. Quixote is the chosen name of Alonso Quijana. Quijana is a middle-aged man who sees himself as a great knight, Don Quixute, and goes through the country doing wondrous deeds, defending mankind in the name of a beautiful lady, Dulcinea.
The stage is a floor, resembling large cut stones and slanting down to the audience. It is a "raked" floor; the horizontal front juts in and out as a stone wall might.
The entire dream is staged in the dungeon. The common become the characters in Cervantes story. A prison whore becomes Quixote's angelic lady, Dulcinea.
Quixote's niece and his housekeeper are in a church seeking advice from their priest. Floor grates are used as confessionals in this scene.
In the death scene two grates are raised from the floor and used as a bed. A hole in the floor serves as a well in one scene.
The orchestra, under the direction of George Lawner, professor of orchestra, will be placed behind the set, out of the audience's view.
Rea said a scrim cloth would be hung along the stone walls as a curtain. When the light hits the cloth from the audience side anyone behind the cloth will be able to see through. This will permit the orchestra to follow the actor's movements.
All University of Kansas Experimental Theatre productions will be free to KU students this year, Jed Davis, professor of speech and drama and director of the University Theatre, has announced.
Student Senate has bought admissions in both the University and Experimental theatres and approved a theatre department policy that one half of each theatre will be reserved for nonstudents, Davis said. Any remaining seats in the nonstudent half will be available free to students an hour and twenty minutes before curtain time.
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unreal, but a terrifying mixture of both." Every event will be viewed from Gregor's current perspective and a robed chorus will utter his thoughts as the lowliest of bugs.
Mrs. Casassa has indicated that makeup, sound and lighting will be important technical effects. She emphasized that there could be numerous interpretations of the play, because audience members will identify differently with Gregor.
This 40-minute play will be followed by one twice as long entitled, "Marshall McLuhan, What're You Doin?"
Written by a 1970 graduate of KU, Steve Reed of Wichita, the play will be directed by David Vargas, Costa Rican graduated student.
Reed exposes the philosophies of the highly controversial McLuhan, who Vargas said, has been considered "everything from an intellectual to a clairvoyant with fortune-teller characteristics."
He counters many of McLuhan's contentions, among them that the Electric Age and its media thwart individuality and will inevitably cause a return to primitive social groupings or a "single global tribe."
Reed presents a clear picture of what is happening on the current scene, contradicting McLuhan's basic theses throughout the play. He also showers his own brand of sarcasm on contemporary society. The structure of the show will be somewhat episodic, following the format of a TV variety show with occasional gags.
Vargas described the show as "geared for those who are keenly attuned to contemporary culture, but who may have second thoughts about following prophet McLuhan into his own variety of an intellectual wilderness, however enticing it may at times appear."
The two plays will be staged at 8:20 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday in Swarthout Recital Hall.
Books: Romance
Among the new paperbacks several are in romantic vein, one of them being a famous novel of almost classical importance, another one of the historical novels of the forties, when such books were enjoying a great surge. The near-classic is W. Somerset Maugham's CAKES AND ALE (Pocket, 75 cents), which first came out in 1930 and was one of the earliest books to appear in paperback. 'Maugham's great wit marks this novel, as he describes a literary romance that seemed to many readers in its time to be descriptive of real people.
The second of these is Thomas B. Costain's THE BLACK ROSE (Pocket, 75 cents), lush historical stuff set back in the 13th century and dealing with Walter of Gurnie and his trip to Cathay. Another new one that will appeal to the romantically inclined is Eleazar Lipsky's THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER (Pocket, $1.25), which is based on a scandalous trial in San Francisco in the 1880s, dealing with a jealous
woman, a millionaire, and a lawyer.
Two for the sentimental are Lloyd C. Douglas' DISPUTED PASSAGE (Pocket, 75 cents) and Dorothy Eden's SIEGE IN THE SUN (Crest, 95 cents). "Disputed Passage" an inspirational novel by Douglas that deals with a young doctor who gained inspiration from a brilliant teacher with whom he was forced to "dispute the passage." "Siege in the Sun" is about a young English woman and her love affair with a young journalist. It is in the familiar Gothic genre of the author.
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