THEATRE SLAM!

One Night Only!

Saturday

September 12, 2009

Performance at 7:30 pm

What do you get when you lock student directors, writers and actors in the theatre overnight?   COMBUSTION! EXPLOSION! (or as the poets say) SLAM! Join us for our second annual experiment in dangerous theatre.

  Within the space of 24 hours, under the guidance of the theatre faculty, our students will create and stage an evening of theatre.  There is no predicting the end-results. Witness the dramatic product of their fertile, but sleep-deprived minds.  It’s live theatre – anything can happen.

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Antigone

by Sophocles

Directed by Dan Shaw

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday

October 8-10, 2009  at 7:30 p.m.

Matinee: Saturday at 2 p.m.

“You wait and see…. The toughest will is first to break:  like hard and untempered steel,  which snaps and shivers at a touch when hot from off the forge.”

    This classical Greek tragedy is the final chapter of the Oedipus trilogy.   It follows the surviving characters of the cursed house of Oedipus.   A civil war has turned families against themselves, and harsh judgment is ordered for those who betrayed Thebes. Themes such as citizenship and civil disobedience are explored.

     This is frequently seen as a play about disobeying unjust laws, but the more dramatic truth is it is about the knowing enforcement of those arbitrary edicts.   Can the State overrule natural law?

      The story can be discussed in terms of fate, but these are people who forcefully attempt to manage their own destinies.  Pride and an insistence on stubborn unyielding obedience drive these characters, and their actions steadily move the play towards its inevitable outcome.

Love @ First Plight

by Drew Aloe

Directed by T. S. Frank

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday

November 19-21, 2009 at 7:30 p.m.

Matinee: Saturday at 2 p.m.

The premier of an original comedy, written for W&J Theatre.

“Do they have a name for it? This special little universe in your mind where crazy Shakespearean schemes like this actually work out … forget it, I think I love her and people who love each other don't try and trick and manipulated each other...I think.”

Romeo and Juliet, Tony and Maria, Dracula and Garlic Bread; all tragic examples of love that have involved a whole bunch of death, a plethora rhymes, and a little bit of halitosis. Now comes a new play in that classic vain full of what the masses have been demanding; satiric examples of college students, chronic liars, and blatant chicanery. Love at First Plight is a play about finding what you need even when you don’t know what it is you want. It’s the tale of Spools, Rich, Flow, and Daisy all trying to get through freshmen year happy, sane, and learning that sometimes just being honest about and to yourself is the only way achieve that.

WINTER TALES VIII

Thursday, Friday and Saturday

February 18-20, 2010

7:30 pm

  The ever popular Winter Tales returns for an evening of short one–act plays (ten minute plays, actually)drawn from original scripts submitted by members of the W&J community, including students, alumni, faculty, administration and staff.  It is a fast-moving and diverse (sometimes very adult) entertainment from fresh voices.   Our eighth year!

The Triangle Factory Fire Project

By Christopher Piehler, in collaboration with Scott Alan Evans

Directed by William Cameron

Thursday, Friday and Saturday

April 22-24, 2010  at 7:30 p.m.

Matinee: Saturday at 2 p.m.

 “There were three stairs leading up to the roof, with flames running over them.  And here I am, two days before my eighteenth birthday.  I was thinking about my mother and I figure…I gotta get out!”

On Saturday, March 25, 1911 at 4:45 in the afternoon, a lit cigarette found its way into a bin of fabric scraps at the Triangle Waist Factory in downtown Manhattan.  In only 28 minutes, flames consumed three floors of the factory as panic-stricken workers scurried for safety only to find doors locked and fire escapes crumbling beneath their feet.  In the chaos, dozens of workers leapt to their deaths in full view of the horrified onlookers below.  In all, 146 workers—mostly young immigrant girls—perished.  The Triangle Factory Fire Project is a masterful work of documentary theatre, using eyewitness accounts and court transcripts to provide a riveting, minute-by-minute account of the tragedy and the social and political firestorm that followed.

  “A searing play, which reminds us why theatre exists." —NY Post.

  "A good play is a wonderful distraction. A great play tugs at your emotional core. A truly great play does all that and also affects it audience by triggering memories and influencing one's view of events. THE TRIANGLE FACTORY FIRE is one of the plays that falls into the last category." —OffOffOnline.