Inside Iowa State
August 13, 1999
ISU Theatre season opens first week of the semester
by Linda CharlesA world premiere by a national playwright and original works by Iowa State students are part of this year's ISU Theatre season in Fisher Theater.
The season begins with ISU associate theater professor Jane Cox performing in The Promised Land, a play she wrote about an 1880s couple who homestead in northwest Nebraska. The play will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Aug. 27-28, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 29.
Lynda Barr's The Good Times are Killing Me is based on the author's autobiographical cartoon series about growing up in an interracial neighborhood in the 1960s. The play will begin at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 24-25 and Oct. 1-2, and at 2 p.m. Sept. 26 and Oct. 3.
ISU students will showcase their writing talents during I've Got Something to Say. Plays and "movement theater" pieces written by students will be performed. Some show times have been altered so campus employees can drop by after work to see the plays, or attend a later performance in the evening. Plays will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 14, 5:30 and 8:30 p.m. Oct. 15-16, and 2 p.m. Oct. 17. Cox is coordinating the productions.
The world premiere of Scaramouche, written by Barbara Field and based on a novel by Rafael Sabatini, is up next. Field, who will be a guest artist-in-residence, has had work produced across the United States, Canada and Europe. She served as playwright-in-residence at The Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, from 1974 to 1981.
The play, a swashbuckler in the tradition of the Three Musketeers, spotlights a young aristocrat during the French Revolution who is a lawyer, politician, actor, lover and buffoon. His enemies call him Scaramouche (the clown). The play will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 12-13 and Dec. 3-4, and at 2 p.m. Nov. 14 and Dec. 5.
Les Liaisons Dangereuses, by Christopher Hampton and based on the novel by Choderlos de Laclos, will start things off spring semester. Craving revenge against the man who jilted her, the Marquise de Merteuil persuades a former lover to seduce the man's young fiancee. The heartless scheme proceeds until true love unexpectedly alters the course of events. The play will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 18-19 and 25-26, and at 2 p.m. Feb. 20 and 27.
Love's Fire, an evening of one-act plays inspired by Shakespeare's sonnets, will be presented in March. The plays were written by Eric Bogosian, Ntozake Shange, Marsha Norman, Tony Kushner, William Finn, Wendy Wasserstein and John Guare, some of whom have received Pulitzer Prize and Tony awards.
Again, late afternoon performances will be featured. Performances begin at 7:30 p.m. March 23, 5:30 and 8:30 p.m. March 24-25, and 2 p.m. March 26.
The season will culminate with Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, which won the 1988 Tony Award for best score and best book, and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best musical. Classic fairy tales are woven into this story of a baker and his wife who seek to break a spell of childlessness laid upon them by a crabby witch. Performances begin at 7:30 p.m. April 14-15 and at 2 p.m. April 16.
Tickets are on sale at the ISU Center box office or through TicketMaster locations. Season tickets are $45; single tickets are $10. Patrons also may make up their own season through any combination of productions; tickets are $9 for all productions but Into the Woods ($13).
For a brochure of the ISU Theatre season, call 4-7611.
Iowa State homepage
Inside Iowa State, inside@iastate.edu, University
Relations
Revised 08/13/99
Copyright © 1999, Iowa State University, all rights
reserved
URL: http://www.inside.iastate.edu/1999/0813/theatre.html