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Samuel Hay, visiting professor of government and law at Lafayette and one of the nation’s leading scholars in black drama, will direct the College Theater production of Dutchman, the 1964 African-American masterpiece by Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), 8 p.m. tonight through Saturday in the Williams Center for the Arts Black Box theater.
Tickets cost $6 and can be purchased by calling the box office at 610-330-5009. A subscription to all four College Theater plays in the 2004-05 season costs $20, representing a savings of $4 compared to the total cost of buying one ticket per play separately.
Raw, compelling, and angry, Dutchman subverts a full gamut of theatrical conventions to strip racism down to its core. On a city subway “heaped in modern myth,” a white woman and a black man meet one another, and ultimately, themselves through a series of revelations that still awe, frighten, and rivet 40 years after the play exploded onto the American stage. The play contains adult language and situations that may not be suitable for all audiences.
The first scene is set in a subway car. The second scene is in the same place a few minutes later. The play is performed without intermission. (Biographies of cast and crew are provided at the end of this press release.)
“LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman (1964), which launched the theater sector of the Black Arts Movement, asks personal questions about what life is and what it should be,” says Hay. “The play, like all good drama, beckons — perhaps even seduces — readers to come back time after time for new revelations. The questions raised by my study of the play for this production concerned the black-and-white riders as co-conspirators”
Founder of the National Conference of African American Theater, Inc., Hay is the author of the play Mary McCleod Bethune and the books African American Theatre: A Historical and Critical Analysis and Ed Bullins: A Literary Biography. He has also written 23 produced plays, including Cream and Brown Sugar and David Richmond. Both won top prize at the North Carolina Kennedy Center/American College Theater Festival and were invited to regional competitions.
Hay has been listed in Who’s Who in America and has received the Harvard University Foundation Medallion, The Arena Players Award, and the A&T Theatre Division’s Susan B. Dudley Founder’s Award and Distinguished Scholar Award. Prior to his current position at Lafayette, he served as interim chair of the department of performing visual arts and theater at North Carolina A&T, and also held positions on the faculty of University of California-Berkeley, Morgan State University, Washington University, Purdue University, and University of Maryland-Baltimore County.
Hay has served as guest editor for Chicory: A Magazine of Black Writing, Footprints: Anthology of Black Student Writings, and Deep: Poetry and Things. He has written essays for publications such as Black Theatre Network Journal, African American Review, Black Women Writers, Media and Methods, Negro History Bulletin, Maryland English Journal, Black World, and several programs for annual Conferences on African American Theatre.
Cast
Clay — Charles Felix ’08
Lula — Toni Ahrens ’05
Young Negro — Edious Kwaipa ’06
Conductor –Lucas Landherr ’05
Rider 1 (Well-dressed Banker) — Jonathan Maier ’07
Rider 2 (Drunk) — Richard Beatty ’08
Rider 3 (Nurse) — Pratima Agrawal
Rider 4 (Petty Thief) — Edious Kwaipa ’06
Crew
Acting director of theater — Suzanne Westfall
Scenic designer — Vicki Neal
Lighting designer/technical director — Richard A. Kendrick
Costume designer — D. Polly Kendrick
Sound designer — Timothy Frey
Stage manager — Sanda Wijeratne ’06
Lighting board operator — Melissa Spitz ’06
Sound board operator — Bill O’Brien ’07
Pratima Agrawal (Nurse) is a resident of Bethlehem who has a minor in theater from the University of Texas, Austin. She also completed a year and half of the Meisner Acting Program at The Acting Studio in New York City. She has experience mostly in film/TV work, but is starting a multicultural theater company in the Lehigh Valley.
Toni Ahrens (Lula), originally from Hamilton, N.Y., is a double major in psychology and English with a concentration in theater. She is appearing in her third College Theatre production. Previous roles include Algy in The Club and Crystal in Little Shop of Horrors with College Theatre, as well as Lucy in You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, Sweet Sue in Sugar, and Polly Baker in Crazy for You with the Marquis Players. Ahrens is also president of Cadence, president and vocal director for the Marquis Players, a Williams Center usher, and a member of the Arts Society steering committee. She will be directing the College Theater production of Uncommon Women and Others in November as part of her senior honors thesis.
Rich Beatty (Drunk) plans to have a double major in government & law and history. He participated in theater throughout high school, with such roles as Giles Corey in TheCrucible, Hugo Peabody in Bye Bye Birdie, and numerous others.
Charles Felix (Clay), another newcomer to College Theater, acted in productions of My Fair Lady and The Pirates of Penzance in his hometown of Brooklyn, N.Y.
Timothy Frey (sound designer) is resident sound and music designer for College Theater and sound engineer for the Williams Center’s Performance Series. He has also designed sound and composed music for Touchstone Theatre, Lehigh University Theatre, and Pennsylvania Youth Theatre. He is a member of ASCAP and the Dramatist’s Guild.
Samuel A. Hay (director) directed the College Theater production of Wole Soyinka’s The Swamp Dwellers last fall.
D. Polly Kendrick (costume designer) has designed costumes for productions ranging from Aida at Hawaii Opera Theater to A Christmas Carol at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. Her credits include The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, Threepenny Opera, Chicago, Madame Butterfly, Horton Foote’s Roads to Home with Jean Stapleton, jon & jen off-Broadway, and The Bartered Bride for New York City Opera. She is resident costume designer at Lafayette and at Wagner College.
Richard Kendrick (lighting designer/technical director) has served as designer/technical director at the Williams Center since 1983. He has also designed three tours of the National Shakespeare Company, for regional opera, and off-Broadway.
Edious Kwaipa (Petty Thief/Young Negro) is a chemistry major from Harare, Zimbabwe. This is his second College Theater Production, having previously performed in The Swamp Dwellers last fall. He is a student supervisor at Kirby Sports Center and also represents the Students for Social Justice Floor on the Residence Hall Council.
Lucas Landherr (Conductor) is a chemical engineering major from Preston, Conn., and is in his sixth theater production at Lafayette. He is president of the student chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and participates in intramurals for Team Acopian.
Jonathan Maier (Well-dressed Man) is a mathematics major from Scranton, Pa. This is his first College Theater production.
Vicki Neal (scenic designer) is an Easton-based scenic and lighting designer whose work has been seen in professional theaters and colleges from Philadelphia to New York City. At Lafayette, Vicki has recently designed Little Shop of Horrors, The Cherry Orchard, The Real Inspector Hound, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Her other local designs include A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Oedipus, and The Three Sisters at Northampton Community College; and The Barber of Seville, Pirates of Penzance, and The Marriage of Figaro for Lehigh University’s music department. Neal’s other productions this season include Kiss Me Kate, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Chess, and at Lafayette, Boy Gets Girl and You Can’t Take It With You.
Bill O’Brien (sound board operator) is a history major and a member of the Dry Surfers, Forensics Society (speech and debate team), radio station WJRH, Marquis Players, College Republicans, and The Lafayette newspaper staff.
Melissa Spitz (light board operator) is an art major and member of the Pi Beta Phi sorority. She has performed on campus in The Vagina Monologues and the Marquis Players’ production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. She will co-direct this spring’s Marquis Players production of Anything Goes.
Sandamali Wijeratne (stage manager) is a double major in international affairs and English with a theater concentration from Mount Lavinia, Sri Lanka. This is her fourth College Theater production, having most recently stage managed Far Away last spring. She is a writing associate and a committee member of the Asian Cultural Association.
Marquis Scholar Omoniyi Adekanmbi ’04 researched the works of dramatist August Wilson with Samuel Hay, visiting professor of government and law.