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Production opens the 2008-09 season
College Theater will present Provincetown Players Five 8 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 24 through Saturday, Sept. 27 in the Williams Center Black Box Theater.
Tickets are $6 and are available through the Williams Center box office, (610) 330-5009. Purchase the four-event College Theater series subscription for $20 and save 17 percent (available through Sept. 27). Please arrive early as there will be no latecomer seating available.
Directed by Michael O’Neill, associate professor of English and director of theater, the production contains five, one-act plays that were originally produced by the Provincetown Players between 1916 and 1922.
During the turbulent years after World War I and into the “Roaring 20’s,” a ground-breaking group of performers took to the stage in makeshift theaters along the tip of Cape Cod. These Provincetown Players performed a series of short plays which generated unprecedented excitement in the heart of Greenwich Village and thrust American drama into the Modern Age.
The performances include Eugene O’Neill’s In The Zone, John Reed’s The Eternal Quadrangle, Alice Rostetter’s, The Widow’s Veil, Susan Glaspell’s Suppressed Desires, and Floyd Dell’s The Angel Intrudes.
O’Neill chose this group of plays in order to uphold the Provincetown Players’ legacy. He explains, “The production is timely because this ground-breaking group’s Greenwich Village theater is about to be demolished to make room for New York University’s campus expansion; the group’s wharf theater in Provincetown washed away years ago. It is crucial to preserve what we have of this group for current and future generations. Our student actors have been surprised to discover that these plays address issues of feminism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, and xenophobia with fresh perspectives.”
O’Neill notes that all five plays will be performed in the round as the proximity of actors to the audience was essential to the early success of the Provincetown Players. “We are trying to emulate this actor-to-audience relationship,” he says.
Cast members include: Alexis Beveridge ’09, Mason Carter ’11, Ankit Chandra ’12, Nat Costa ’11, A.J. Ernst ’09, Hillary Feller ’10, Carolyn Isaac ’12, Jared Kreiger ’09, Keara McCarthy ’10, Sarah Naramore ’12, Sara Peterson ’10, Sean Ryon ’12, Samantha Smith ’12, Carolyn Spalding ’12, Mike Suczewski ’11, Geoffrey Weyl ’09, and Liz Witmer ’10. The stage manager is Christine Reynolds’ 11.