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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A Midsummer Night’s Dream
By William Shakespeare
Directed by William Cameron
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday
November 17-19, 2011 7:30 p.m.
Matinee: Saturday at 2 p.m.
“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact…”
Shakespeare's intertwined love triangles are complicated from the start--Demetrius and Lysander both want Hermia but she only has eyes for Lysander. Hermia's father wants Demetrius for a son-in-law, while Helena’s unreturned love burns for Demetrius. They all flee the city under the cover of darkness. But in the forest, unbeknownst to the mortals, Oberon and Titania (the King and Queen of the faeries) are having a lovers spat of their own. Throw in a group of labourers preparing a play for the Duke's wedding and the complications become fantastically funny. This is one of Shakespeare best loved comedies.
(Previously presented in 1995)
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WINTER TALES X
Thursday, Friday and Saturday
February 9-11, 2012
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 Tenth Year!
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Vanities
By Jack Heifner
Directed by Dan Shaw
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday
March 1-3, 2012 7:30 p.m.
Matinee: Saturday at 2 p.m.
“ I told Ted I didn’t understand why he had to get involved. The Viet Cong aren’t bombing the campus. But Ted says he’s protesting because the war bothers his conscience. And I said, ‘Ted, control your conscience. You don’t even know those people’.”
A bittersweet comedy that is an astute, snapshot sharp chronicle of the lives of three Texas girls. In 1963, Joanne, Kathy and Mary are aggressively vivacious cheerleaders. Five years later in their college sorority house, they are confronting their futures with nervous jauntiness. In 1974, they reunite briefly in New York. Their lives have diverged. Their friendship, which once thrived on assumption as well coordinated as sweater sets, is strained and ambiguous. Old time banter rings false. Their attempts at honest conversation only show they can no longer afford to have very much in common.
"Unnervingly funny. . . . Fast moving, sneakily stinging dialogue." Newsweek
(Previously presented in 1994)
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The Pledge
A New Play
Written and Directed by T.S. Frank
Thursday, Friday and Saturday
April 12-14, 2012 7:30 p.m.
Matinee: Saturday at 2 p.m.
What is it about the Gamma Alpha Phi fraternity that makes it so special? Why are the lives of the brothers who belong to this one house so blessed? And why is McKinley College so eager to keep their secrets? The answer to these questions is the pledge GAP men take and keep.
The premiere of T.S. Frank’s new play explores life on an idyllic college campus and the terrible price some young men and women are willing to pay to keep it so.
This is the forth original full length play written by T.S. Frank to premier at Washington and Jefferson College.
