The Theatre Department produces an annual season of plays, offering a variety of performance and technical opportunities for both students and community members. The season includes classic and contemporary works, musicals, and children’s plays. All academic productions are free to the public and seating is on a first-come, first-seated basis.  No tickets and no reservations. 

Spring 2012

Student-Directed One-Acts
Bodker Black Box Theatre 

Performances:
Feb. 17-19 and Feb. 24-26
Friday and Saturday - 7:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday - 2 p.m.

Students who have taken Play Reading and Production either Fall 2010 or who will enroll Fall 2011 will be eligible to direct a one-act of their choosing (with the approval of the artistic coordinator). 

La Culebra by Pamela Gerke
Director: Timothy Noble
Bodker Black Box Theatre 

Performances:
March 9-11
Friday and Saturday - 7:30 p.m., Saturday noon and 3 p.m., Sunday - 2 and 4 p.m.
Tours to elementary schools after spring break.

This ancient story comes from the Aztec culture and shows what happens when a kind farmer saves the life of a snake.  Although the farmer tries to explain that if you do good, then good will come back to you in return, the snake insists on asking the other animals to settle the disagreement. If the farmer loses, the snake will eat the farmer.  It takes a donkey, a chicken, and a coyote to convince the snake that you should always do good deeds—but never expect something in return.

The Spitfire Grill by James Valcq and Fred Alley
Director: Beate Pettigrew
Polsky Theatre

Performances:
April 27-29 and May 4-6
Friday and Saturday 7:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 2 p.m.

A feisty parolee follows her dreams, based on a page from an old travel book, to a small town in Wisconsin and finds a place for herself working at Hannah's Spitfire Grill. It is for sale but there are no takers for the only eatery in the depressed town, so newcomer Percy suggests to Hannah that she raffle it off. Entry fees are one hundred dollars and the best essay on why you want the grill wins. Soon, mail is arriving by the wheelbarrow full and things are definitely cookin' at the Spitfire Grill. This musical is based on the film by Lee David Zlotoff.

Fall 2012

BecauseHeCan by Arthur Kopit
Director: Beate Pettigrew
Bodker Black Box Theatre

Performances:
Oct. 5-7 and Oct. 12-14
Friday and Saturday 7:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 2 p.m. 

He calls himself ISeeU, but you can't see him. And if it's you he wants, nothing can stop him. In a plot worthy of Kafka or Orwell, this alarming, sinister and erotic tale propels an unsuspecting married couple into their worst nightmare: a world with no secrets in which private lives are no longer private. For this couple, the future has arrived and they are among its first casualties. BECAUSEHECAN was initially produced at Actors Theatre of Louisville and Off Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club under the title Y2K.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Rupert Holmes
Director: Chris McCoy
Musical direction by Ron Stinson
Polsky Theatre

Performances:
Nov. 9-11 and Nov. 16-18 
Friday and Saturday 7:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 2 p.m. 

This wildly warm-hearted theatrical experience kicks off when the Music Hall Royale (a hilariously loony Victorian musical troupe) "puts on" its flamboyant rendition of an unfinished Dickens mystery. The story itself deals with John Jasper, a Jekyll-and-Hyde choirmaster who is madly in love with his music student, the fair Miss Rosa Bud.  Miss Bud is, in turn, engaged to Jasper's nephew, young Edwin Drood. Our title character disappears mysteriously one stormy Christmas Eve-but has Edwin Drood been murdered? And if so, then whodunnit?  The giddy playfulness of this play-within-a-play draws the audience toward one of Drood’s most talked-about features, which allows the audience to vote on the solution as prelude to the most unusual and hilarious finale!

Spring 2013

reasons to be pretty by Neil LaBute
Director: Beate Pettigrew
Bodker Black Box Theatre

Performances:
Feb. 22-24 and March 1-3
Friday and Saturday 7:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 2 p.m. 

This love story about the impossibility of love introduces us to Greg, who really, truly adores his girlfriend, Steph. Unfortunately, he also thinks she has a few physical imperfections, and when he casually mentions them, all hell breaks loose. A hopelessly romantic drama about the hopelessness of romance.

Fisherman and the Goldfish
Director: Sheilah Philip
Bodker Black Box Theatre

Performances:
March 15-17
Friday and Saturday - 7:30 p.m., Saturday noon and 3 p.m., Sunday - 2 and 4 p.m.
Tours to elementary schools after spring break. 

Based on a Russian story by Alexander Pushkin, this is the tale of an old fisherman who catches a glistening, talking goldfish.  The beautiful fish promises the old man anything he desires, if he will just release the fish back into the sea.  The old fisherman is struck by wonder, and kindly releases the fish without making any wish or demand.  But when he returns home to tell his wife of this wondrous thing, she scolds him and sends him back time after time to the fish, with wishes for more and bigger things each time.  See what happens as the wife's greed gets the better of her!

Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz
Director: Jerry Jay Cranford
Polsky Theatre

Performances:
April 26-28, May 3-5
Friday and Saturday 7:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 2 p.m. 

This 2003 Pulitzer Prize winning play is set in Florida in 1929 in a Cuban–American cigar factory, where cigars are still rolled by hand and "lectors" are employed to educate and entertain the workers. The arrival of a new lector is a cause for celebration, but when he begins to read aloud from Anna Karenina, he unwittingly becomes a catalyst in the lives of his avid listeners, for whom Tolstoy, the tropics and the American dream prove a volatile combination.