The Department of Theatre and Communication, with the assistance and support of the W&J Student Theatre Company, is the College’s primary theatre producing body. Serving as a “lab” to apply course lesson, the department provides performance and production opportunities for theatre major and minors as well as those students with a more casual interest in theatre. They produce several major productions each year at the Olin Fine Arts Center as well as in other campus venues.
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The Ruby Sunrise
By Rinne Groff
Directed by William Cameron
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday
November 15-17, 2012 7:30 p.m.
Matinee: Saturday at 2 p.m.
“RUBY: Television’s gonna change people. Make a whole different world where people can see the world right in their own homes. Moving pictures in your living room…. Soon we’ll get pictures from all over the world…. Television will be the end of war ‘cause who could bear to see war right in your own living room?”
Setting off from a farm in Indiana as a young girl named Ruby struggles to turn her dream of the first all-electrical television system into a reality, and jumping forward to a McCarthy-era New York TV studio where Ruby's heirs fight over how her story should be told, THE RUBY SUNRISE charts the course of the phenomenon of television: from early idealism and sparks of genius, to promises fulfilled and compromises brokered, and beyond.
Rinne Groff demonstrates thematic ambition and theatrical flair. This play is a gem; entertaining and thought-provoking. It is a commentary on the transformative powers of storytelling - channeling the power of television.
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Winter Tales XI
Thursday, Friday and Saturday
February 14-16, 2013
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 Eleventh Year!
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Trifles and Woman's Honor
Two one-act plays
By Susan Glaspell
Directed by Karin Maresh
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday
February 28
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March 1 - 2, 2013 7:30 p.m.
Matinee: Saturday at 2 p.m.
“MRS HALE: I might have known she needed help! I know how things can be—for women. I tell you, it's queer, Mrs Peters. We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things—it's all just a different kind of the same thing.”
What would you do if you uncovered evidence that a woman who suffered years of abuse by her husband killed him? Would you turn it in? What would you do to save the reputation of a woman caught in a scandalous situation -- anything? Susan Glaspell's feminist classic one-act plays, the drama TRIFLES (1916) and the comedy WOMAN’S HONOR (1918), remain timely as they raise these questions in their exploration of the bonds between women and the confined societal roles they share in early 20th century America. A Pulitzer Prize winner and co-founder of the Provincetown Playhouse, Glaspell is well known in academic circles, and TRIFLES, often considered a perfect play, is one of the most anthologized plays by an American playwright.
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Grease
The 50’s Rock’n’ Roll Musical
By Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey
Guest Director, John Gresh - Artistic Director of Caravan Theatre of Pittsburgh
Thursday, Friday and Saturday
April 11-13, 2013 7:30 p.m.
Matinee: Saturday at 2 p.m.
“DANNY: Listen, if it was up to me, I’d never even look at any other chick but you. Hey, tell you what. We’re throwin’ a party tomorrow night for Frenchy. She’s gonna quit school before she flunks again and go to Beauty School. How’dja like to make it down there with me?”
Here is Rydell High's senior class of 1959: duck-tailed, hot-rodding "Burger Palace Boys" and their gum-snapping, hip-shaking "Pink Ladies" in bobby sox and pedal pushers, evoking the look and sound of the 1950s in this rollicking musical. Head "greaser" Danny Zuko and new (good) girl Sandy Dumbrowski try to relive the high romance of their "Summer Nights" as the rest of the gang sings and dances its way through such songs as "Greased Lightnin'", "It's Raining on Prom Night", "Alone at the Drive-In Movie" recalling the music of Buddy Holly, Little Richard and Elvis Presley that became the soundtrack of a generation. An 8-year run on Broadway and two subsequent revivals along with innumerable school and community productions place GREASE among the world's most popular musicals.
PAST PRODUCTIONS
