UMass drama: Theater department brews eclectic mix for 2011-12 season
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A historic Spanish comedy, a drama based on a memorable flood, a puppetry piece and a classic bit of Shakespeare are all on tap this year as the Theater Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst opens its 2011-12 season this weekend.
The department, which is focused on close connections between students, faculty and visiting artists - "Theater is not a one-man show" is the basic tagline - is presenting seven productions this season and will feature collaborations with Tony Simotes, the artistic director of the Lenox-based Shakespeare and Co., and the Fringe Summer Program of Edinburgh, Scotland.
The collaborative nature of the work is a big plus for students.
"The department is very good about supporting its faculty and its students' creative projects," said Sarah Brew, a UMass graduate student in dramaturgy. "When there are projects that either faculty or students are already working on, or are passionate about doing, or even if they have just a kernel of an idea for, the department does its best to find a space for it to become realized."
One of those projects kicks off the new season, with performances Oct. 14 and 15 of "Love the Doctor," an adaptation of "El amor medico," a comedy by the 17th-century Spanish dramatist Tirso de Molina. The Oct. 14 performance is at 8 p.m.; Oct. 15 shows are at 2 and 8 p.m. All are in the Curtain Theater in the UMass Fine Arts Center.
Brew and fellow graduate student Josephine Hardman, with an assist from UMass theater professor and playwright/translator Harley Erdman, are offering the first English translation of "El amor medico," written around 1621, which tells the tale of an ambitious woman who uses her wits to get around the ironclad conventions of the time for ladies: She disguises herself as a doctor not just to practice medicine but to win the man she loves.
Brew said she first discovered "El amor medico" a few years ago when she was working with Erdman on the translation and adaptation of another Tirso play, "Marta la piadosa" ("Marta the Divine"). Right away, she said, "I fell in love with the play ... I think the entire play is eerily modern. The female protagonist, Jeronima, must learn to balance and negotiate her love for a passion - medicine - and her love for a man just like any 21st-century woman might."
After Hardman helped her with the translation of "Love the Doctor," Brew set about adapting the new script for the stage, trimming scenes and characters and making the dialogue more accessible.
"The language in the translation sounds mostly modern, though there are moments where characters' speech is heightened and/or rhyming," Brew said.
A question-and-answer session with the cast and crew will be held after the Oct. 14 show.
Coming up
The season's first production in the larger Rand Theater in the FAC will be "Hell in High Water," a drama by Marcus Gardley, a UMass professor of African-American theater and playwriting. Gardley, whose work has won a number of awards, particularly in the San Francisco Bay area - he's originally from Oakland, Calif. - travels back to the great Mississippi River flood of 1927, the most destructive in the nation's history, for his latest work.
"Hell in High Water" is set on a levee mound in Greenville, Miss., and centers around two father-and-son pairs who are stranded with thousands of other people when flood waters engulf the region. Leroy Percy, a white cotton farmer, and his son, Will, must contend with preserving their farm and labor force, while Joe Goodin, an African-American bootblack and his son, James, imagine ways to inspire change for their people.
"Hell in High Water" will be staged Nov. 10, 11, 12, and 16-19 at 8 p.m. and also on Nov. 12 and 19 at 2 p.m.
In addition, the annual Rand Lecture, which is free and open to the public, will take place at the theater Nov. 10 at 4 p.m. This year's guest is Molly Smith, artistic director of Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. Smith commissioned another play by Gardley, "Every Tongue Confess," for the opening of a new stage, the Kogod Cradle, at the Arena Stage complex last year.
Winter solstice
Wrapping up 2011 will be 10 performances in December of "Solstice," in which UMass professor and puppeteer Miguel Romero will join forces with theater students and Amherst College music professor Eric Sawyer for a puppetry piece with a "carnival-esque" atmosphere that's aimed at the whole family.
Four additional productions will take place in 2012, beginning with "The Tailor of Inverness" in late January and early February, a story of how a boy from eastern Poland ends up a tailor in Scotland. March will feature several performances of "Urinetown," a satirical musical comedy that played on Broadway and imagines a world so polluted that people have to pay to use the bathroom.
The environmental theme continues in April 2012 with the "Beyond the Horizon Festival," a series of original works by students and visiting professionals that have been developed in response to the devastating 2010 British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, as a means of addressing the responsibility to protect the planet. This festival of "designed theater" has been organized under the direction of dramaturgy MFA student Megan McClain.
The Theater Department's season concludes in late April with several performances of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," a new production that will be led by Shakespeare & Co.'s Tony Simotes, who played the part of Puck in that same play in his inaugural role with the company in 1978.
Tickets for all Theater Department performances are $16 for general admission and $8 for students and seniors. Multiple-show discounts are available. For details and a schedule of all shows, call the Fine Arts Center box office at 545-2511 or visit www.umass.edu/theater/stages.php.
