Thursday, February 15, 1990/University Daily Kansan
Pot-Pourri mix
Theater students direct four contemporary plays in series
By Byce J. Tache
Kansan staff writer
I’m not often that a person can encounter insanity, snake handling in a church, family struggles and a suicide in one weekend.
However, the mixture of drama that the Pot-Pourri productions creates happens only once a year.
That theatrical mixture begins tonight and continues through Sunday. For the past four nights, a KU student will direct a different play each night at the Lane Theatre.
Curtain time are 8 p.m. All shows have been sold out.
The series will begin tonight with productions of “Lemon Sky,” and “Night, Mother.”
The annual University Theatre Pot-Pourri series was designed to give upperclass and graduate theater students an opportunity to direct in a workshop setting, named Jack Wright, director of University Theatre.
Last semester, students were able to apply for the series. A faculty and student committee then selected the students to direct.
The script directors were responsible for choosing their scripts, auditions, casting, rehearsing and actual staging.
Scott C. Reeves, Quatre senior, will direct tonight’s play, “The Hooligan,” written by Harold Piper.
Father weaved the play in 1963 but didn’t like it until he rescheduled it 21 years later. Reeves said it makes place in a government sanctioned insane asylum he said. “It’s basically a struggle between two people: Roote, the head of the hospital, and Gibbs, his assistant.
Reeves was responsible for getting one patient pregnant and causing the death of another. Reeves said the play was a comedy of menace because while dealing with terrifying themes, it managed to be funny.
The quality of humor and horror to the play,
“There is an electrocution of an innocent man at the end of the second act,” he said. “Watching a man get fried on stage isn’t what one would consider funny, yet it’s a very funny scene.
John Albramson, Wichita sophomore, who plays Roote, said he found his character intriguing.
In almost all of Pinter’s plays, what the characters say is always an antiscience of what they desire.
He said, “Roote represents the end of compassion in bureaucratic stability.”
Marcus Richey, Wichita senior, will direct “Lemon Sky,” tomorrow. The play by Landford Wilson is first produced of Broadway in 1970.
“Lemon Sky” details the relationship between a father and his son, Alan, who had been separated, and their attempts to pick up the pieces of the playing of its think, he said. “The characters have the power to step out of the situation and talk about each other and how things are going.”
Richelle said she directed three previous plays, two on his girl dealing with death in “Talking With...”
Own and one for a class project.
“It’s pretty amazing what a director has to do,” he said. He has to see the big picture and the integral pieces that and make the whole. He has to be classroom coach, trainer psychologist, big brother and at the same time, work with so many different elements.
Kristen Fitzgerald, Chicago senior, plays Alan’s stepmother Ronnie.
She does a really good job of masking what she feels.
Fitzgerald said, “She just sits there and smiles.
But she’s definitely a peacemaker.”
Jonathan Parrill, Topael senior, is directing Saturday’s production of Jane Martin’s Talking With.
The play is a collection of eight monologues by individual women, Farrell said.
“I’m about eight lashes through a number of different trials,” he said. “I’ve an actress getting ready to go upstage, another actress in a rehearsal, a woman in ninth grade, a homeless woman in an older lady working with the problems of aging and a woman in a rehearsal.
Parnell said, “Talking With...” was not a feminist play.
“A lot of plays are out to make a statement and that alienates the audience,” he said. “But this play is about communication, about talking. You’re not going to be preached at.”
Shannon Broderick, Leawood senior, plays a snake handler in “Talking With...”
She’s a young teenager who handles snakes at her church with her parents.
Broderick said, “Her mom just died of a snake bite so her sort of disillusioned by her faith. She’s trying to come to grips on her mother’s death and her coming of age.”
She said the overall theme of the play was that women were survivors.
Meena Price, Cardiff, Wales, graduate student, will direct Marsha Norman’s “Night, Mother,” on Sunday.
Written in 1981, it is the most contemporary of the four plays.
“It’s the story of two strangers who meet, spent a brief evening together and separate,” Price said.
What makes the play unusual is that the two strangers are mother and daughter.
They’re figures of the American dream. Price said they are failures in their own eyes and they spend their time playing games to fulfill their empty lives.
Price said the play’s themes parallel reality. The characters partly feel like failures because of their lack of money.
“Success is so important in the States,” she said.
“Money is everything. This is especially noticeable to me, an outsider who has come snatch into this materialism.”
Jasmy Iuen, Lenea freshman, plays Momma in “Night, Mother.”
She said she’s very selfish. She isn’t really affectionate toward her daughter.
Her husband and daughter made relationships with her husband and daughter with her withdraw from the Millions. However, by the end of the play, she learns she has to move on.
“There’s constant turmoil, constant confrontation and questioning,” she said.
ested in the classics: Shakespeare, Mollere and Sophocles," he said. "When I was going to school there were no Black actors doing what I was doing." He being a Black actor had its inherent problem. "Racism is very prevalent here, in Lawrence, at KU, everywhere," he said. "I think it's hidden. Its subcjecions, sometimes unconscious. We can never forget or not be reminded enough of you that transformation and we need you," he said.
Alexander said he wanted to inspire students the way he was Robert Townsend, for instance, are remembered. They are forcing a remarkable path for others to follow," he said. Forgiving his own way is something Alexander said he enjoyed. inter-