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Lafayette College Theater will present John Guare’s The House of Blue Leaves 8 p.m. Sept. 27–30 at the Williams Center Black Box Theater. Tickets cost $6 and can be purchased by calling the box office at 610-330-5009. Seating is limited and latecomers will not be seated.
A brown bag preview will be presented noon, Sept. 25 at the Black Box Theater. The preview is free and lunch will be available for $3.
The play’s director,Michael O’Neill, associate professor of English and director of theater, expounds on choosing The House of Blue Leaves for the fall production.
“We always look for plays that will challenge our student actors and that will enhance their educational experience at Lafayette,” he says. “John Guare, the author of the play, has a substantial, although underrated, body of work. Like most of his plays, The House of Blue Leaves experiments with the clash of styles – in this case: comedy, farce, cabaret, and tragedy.”
Written in 1972, the play is set on Oct. 4, 1965 – the day Pope Paul VI arrived in New York City to address the United Nations and say Mass at Yankee Stadium. It was the first time any pope had ever traveled outside of Europe; his agenda was to focus the world’s attention on ending the war in Vietnam. Despite this, the war continued until 1975.
O’Neill believes that the parallels between the madness of that war and the current occupation of Iraq are worth considering.
“I hope the audience laughs a lot and thinks even more. The students may find the play informative about an era – the 1960’s – a time for which they show great interest and curiosity. Their parents and grandparents will likely get a huge dose of nostalgia,” he says.
“The House of Blue Leaves is a play with layer upon layer of irony, and I’ve never before played a character with such depth,” says Kelly Hess ’08 (Prospect Park, N.J.), a psychology major. “Michael really is an actor’s director, always giving us choices and helping us find the character, rather than simply ordering what he wants out of us. Working with him has taught me to take chances and to see the different possibilities that are available, even if you have to search a little to find them. I will take these lessons with me, not only to my classes, but through my life.”
The cast and crew include Ross Burlingame ’09 (Lancaster, Pa.), an English major; Alexis Beveridge ’09 (Bethesda, Md.), a history and government & law major; Hess; Chris Jupitz ’08 (Grasonville, Md.), an economics and business major; Kiira Elizabeth Benzing ’07(Ridgewood, N.J.), an interdisciplinary French major; Jonathan Maier ’07 (Scranton, Pa.), a math major; Jayne Miller ’10; Adekemi Egunsola ’09 (Rabat, Morocco), a chemistry and math double major; Rachel Ports ’10; Charles Felix ’09 (Brooklyn, N.Y.), an engineering and English double major; Jared Kreiger ’09 (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.), a government and law major; and Jaqueline Greenlee ’10.