10F AUGUST 1996
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
LAWRENCE JOURNAL-WORLD
LCT's season offers something for everyone
RENEE KNOEBER/JOURNAL-WORLD PHOTO
Performers with the Lawrence Community Theatre rehearse the Arthur Miller play "The Price" during the 1995-96 season. The new season's productions will include "Something's Afoot," "Lost in Yonkers" and "The Cemetery Club."
Musicals and comedies are on tap at Lawrence Community Theatre.
BY JAN BILES
JOURNAL-WORLD ARTS EDITOR
Mary Doveton, managing artistic director of Lawrence Community Theatre, is excited about the upcoming 1996- 97 season, which she said offers something for just about everybody.
"Lawrence has so many talented people,it's just a matter of linking up with them."
Mary Doveton, managing artistic director
And if you are a Kansas University student, you can have the opportunity to try out for parts, help with lighting or build sets.
"Lawrence has so many talented people,it's just a matter of linking up with them," Doveton said during an interview to announce the new season.
The new season's productions include:
- "Something's Afoot," a musical murder mystery by James McDonald, Davis Vos and Robert Gerlach that will be directed by Doveton, Sept.
27-29, Oct. 3-6 and Oct. 11-
13.
This whodunit, loosely based on Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians," revolves around a number of guests staying at an English island estate during a terrible storm.
"The people start dying in bizarre and strange ways, and singing all the while," Doveton said. "It'll be a technical challenge. There'll be poison gas coming out of a phone and a maid will be swallowed up by a vase."
- "Lost in Yonkers," a
Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning comic drama by Neil Simon, Dec. 6-8 and Dec. 12-15.
Set in 1942, the play tells the story of two brothers who are sent to live with their grandmother. The brothers must contend with their tough grandmother, the secret romance of an aunt and an uncle who may have mob connections.
"It's a really good family show," Doveton said. "We've been wanting to do it for a couple of years, but couldn't get the rights."
- "The Cemetery Club," a comedy by Ivan Menchell that will be directed by retired Kansas University theater professor Jed Davis, Jan. 17-19 and Jan. 23-26.
In this play, three widows have been meeting once a month for tea before going to the cemetery to visit their husbands' graves. The friction comes when one of the ladies has a romance with a widower butcher.
"It's funny, but it also has a touching side," Doveton said.
- "Fortinbras," a comic work by contemporary playwright Lee Blessing, Feb. 21-23 and Feb. 27-March 2.
"The play takes up where Hamlet' left off," Doveton said. "Fortinbras takes charge. He's a Yuppie who deals with ghosts and people who have survived the battle.
"It's a literary play and asks a lot of questions about leadership and authority. People who know 'Hamlet' will enjoy it on one level; those who don't will still enjoy it."
- "Blood Brothers," a musical by Willy Russell, April 11-13, April 17-20 and April 25-27.
A musical tragedy nominated for six Tony Awards, this show tells the story of twins separated at birth and raised in different social circumstances.
"The music is just gorgeous," Doveton said. "It's some of the best music I've heard in a long time."
ON STAGE OPS
The Lawrence Community Theatre, 1501 N.H., is staging several plays during the 1996-'97 school year in which Kansas University students can become involved.
For information on how you can participate, call 843-7469.
Also, tickets are on sale for the LCT productions. Call the number above for that information as well.
- "Whose Wife Is It Anyway," a farce by Ray Cooney, June 6-8 and June 12-15.
The winner of the 1991 Olivier Award for Best Comedy, the plot centers on a government minister who finds a body trapped in a hotel's sash window and then tries to get out of the situation.
"It will end the season on a high note," Doveton said.
Play tells story of immigrants
Continued from page 9F
"The immigrant experience has an enormous consequence but it's usually not discussed or lost. And I think that's a problem because the majority of us are the children of immigrants."
Gronbeck-Tedesco said he hopes those seeing the play will be inspired to seek out stories about their own heritages, adding, "Immigrating is a complex incident. It's full of hope and trauma. It's a mixed bag of experiences... It's an identity-making event."
And what does Gronbeck-Tedesco get out of writing stories based on his family's immigration?
"It's given me a fresh sense of what it means to be an American and the process of becoming an American," he said.
In his statement of thematic concern, Pinkston said he hoped to look at personal relationships and sexual identity as well as the roles of politics, religion, big business and the media in American culture.
EAT takes on student scripts
"The Camp Follower," focuses on Lloyd Stiller, a TV reporter looking for the story of his life. Stiller has a run-in with a refugee drag-queen, befriends a cocktail waitress and gets involved in a hotly contested gubernatorial race. These confrontations force Stiller to reexamine his values and beliefs.
Continued from page 9F
"The play may suggest that mainstream journalism — by replacing in-depth reporting with spoon-fed, instant information that is easily digested has duped the public and now serves only those who have the most to lose from full disclosure. The potential
Zimmerman's "Tidings" is a tenderly wrought story of a presumed drowned man who returns to his life with no explanation or memory of his accident. With the aid of a doctor, he begins to move toward recovery.
result: a sort of theocratic totalitarianism," he said.
"It's phenomenal to know that anyone even wants to see it," Zimmerman said. "There are many first playwrights who would want to be involved in every step of production, but I'm fascinated just to sit back and see what they are going to do with it."
Lim said he hopes that staging plays by younger writers will help attract a new audience for EAT.
"We could continue to do the tried and true, but unless we nurture new voices of the future of American theater we'll be in jeopardy," he said.
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