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By Maria Irene Fornes
Directed by Alan Freeman
Performances in Keck Theater
November 7-11, 2007

Cuban-born Marie Irene Fornes’ provocative tragi-comedy was written and first performed in the experimental theater world of the East Village in 1977/78. Since then, Fefu And Her Friends has become an American avant-garde classic.

In the spring of 1935, Fefu (pronounced Feh-foo) hosts seven women friends to lunch and to practice their entertainment for an imminent charity benefit. Some are old friends, some former lovers. Some fire guns. Does anybody die? The second of three short acts deconstructs the action, moving the audience from the large theater to four separate intimate locales. There the women continue to interact in “psychological close-up." The third act returns to the larger theater. At times hilarious, at times disturbing, the play provokes a confrontation with the truths and illusions of day-to-day living, feminine identity, and the theater itself.

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freely adapted from
°ä²¹±ô»å±ð°ù´Ç²Ô’s Life Is A Dream (LA VIDA ES SUEÑO)
by Sheila Callaghan

Your father is the CEO of a multinational corporation who, as soon as you were old enough to dial a phone, chained you in the musty, dusty, hellish workplace of the customer service center. Would you go crazy if you were suddenly made CEO for a day? Having locked you away in the first place, certain you’d become a tyrant otherwise, your father now lets you out. When you behave as foretold, did your father make you the tyrant? Was it fated all along? All around you is in crazy turmoil: people disguised as other people; marriages plotted; and overthrows planned. On top of it all, you are told that everything you have experienced was only a dream. What would you do? What if your whole life is only dreaming? What is it like to experience the phantasmagoria of dreaming and have no idea what is real?

This hip and funny adaptation of °ä²¹±ô»å±ð°ù´Ç²Ô’s classic 17th century Spanish drama, Life is a Dream, is set in a modern office, exploring in highly physical, verbally dazzling ways a company dynasty and how it falls…

Guest Playwright: Sheila Callaghan
Sheila will be in residence for various stages of the rehearsal process during the fall of 2007.

Guest Director: Jessica Kubzansky
Co-Artistic Director of The Theater @ Boston Court, Pasadena, CA
Both Playwright and Director are Guest Artists courtesy of the Culley Fund.

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She Stoops To Conquer, or The Mistakes of a Night
by Oliver Goldsmith

First performed in 1773, this “laughing" comedy was Goldsmith’s wildly popular answer to the all-pervasive sentimental comedies that predominated in the 18th century English playhouses.

The action focuses on the inside-out courtship between Young Marlow and Kate Hardcastle, the independent minded daughter of a county squire. Marlow is tongue-tied around women of his own class but a libertine otherwise. To win his heart Kate acts the role of a serving maid fooling not only her suitor, but her father, her trouble-making step-brother and her foolish step-mother. The mistakes accumulate, leading to uproarious action including a chase scene through the mud in the middle of the night.

The º£½ÇÉçÇø production, directed by John Bouchard, will have scenery and lighting designed by alum Adrian Jones ’92, costumes co-designed by Tom Slotten and Amanda Lee ’08 and original music composed by Allison Johnson.

Guest artists courtesy of the Culley Fund.

Performs April 18, 19, 20, 25 & 26 at 7:30pm,
April 27 at 2:00pm, and May 17 at 8:00pm in Keck Theater

written and directed by Laural Meade

The Suffragist Roadshow follows a group of women activists as they take-off on a cross country road trip in 1915 to gather signatures on a petition for national suffrage. Performed entirely in and around a Chrysler touring car, this fictionalized account of a true story tracks the womens’ progress through uncharted geopraphic, political and inter-personal territory. Their journey, at times humorous and harrowing, ultimately becomes a metaphor for the fractured beginnings of a milestone social movement.

Performs April 22 & 23 at 8:00pm in Hillside Amphitheater
and May 16 at 8:00pm in Keck Theater

A Presentation by the º£½ÇÉçÇø Department of Theater
and the G. William Hume Fellowship in the Performing Arts

Written by Lauren Wilson
Adapted from Moliere’s THE MISER
Directed by Michael Fields

Keck Theater, February 1 & 2, 2008.

Desperate lovers, illegal servants, and obscenely wealthy women claw for every cent they can get in the social jungle of modern-day California. Starring Dell’Arte’s Joan Schirle, this raucous, sex-soaked farce reinvents Molière’s Miser as an elderly woman who wants to rent out her daughter’s womb to her golf partner. This is Molière with the heat turned up, the stops pulled out, and women on top.

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