University Theatre Productions

The Glass Menagerie
By Tennessee Williams
Directed by Richard Nimke
October 8-10 & 14-17 at 7:30 p.m.
October 11 at 1:30 p.m.
Kjer Theatre
A drama of great tenderness, charm and beauty, The Glass Menagerie is one of the most famous plays of the modern theatre.  Set in 1937, we meet Amanda Wingfield, a faded, tragic remnant of Southern gentility who lives in poverty in a dingy St. Louis apartment with her son, Tom, and her daughter, Laura.  Amanda strives to give meaning and direction to her life and the lives of her children, though her methods are ineffective and irritating.  Tom is driven nearly to distraction by his mother’s nagging and seeks escape in alcohol and the world of the movies.  Laura also lives in her illusions.  She is “crippled,” and this, along with her mother’s anxiety to see her married, drives her more and more into herself.  Amanda and Laura strive to create a word of illusion in order to make life bearable, but in the end, it collapses around them.

The Foreigner
By Larry Shue
Directed by F. Reed Brown
November 5-7 & 11-14 at 7:30 p.m.
November 8 at 1:30 p.m.
Riverside Theatre
An inspired comic romp, The Foreigner is the winner of two Obie Awards and two Outer Critics Circle Awards as Best New American Play and Best Off-Broadway Production.  The play begins in a fishing lodge in rural Georgia often visited by "Froggy" LeSeuer, a British demolition expert who occasionally runs training sessions at a nearby army base. This time "Froggy" has brought along a friend, a pathologically shy young man named Charlie who is overcome with fear at the thought of making conversation with strangers. So "Froggy," before departing, tells all assembled that Charlie is from an exotic foreign country and doesn’t speak English. Once alone, the fun really begins.  Charlie overhears more than he should—the evil plans of a sinister, two-faced minister and his redneck associate; the fact that the minister's pretty fiancée is pregnant; and many other damaging revelations made with the thought that Charlie doesn't understand a word being said. The fact that he does fuels the nonstop hilarity of the play and sets up the wildly funny climax in which things go uproariously awry for the "bad guys."

The Bald Soprano and The Lesson
By Eugene Ionesco
Directed by Jennifer Chapman
December 3-5 & 9-12 at 7:30 p.m.
Kjer Theatre
Often called the father of the Theater of the Absurd, Eugène Ionesco wrote groundbreaking plays that are simultaneously hilarious, tragic, and profound. Now his classic one acts The Bald Soprano and The Lesson are available in an exciting new translation by Pulitzer Prize-finalist Tina Howe, noted heir of Ionesco’s absurdist vision, acclaimed by Frank Rich as “one of the smartest playwrights we have.”  In The Bald Soprano Ionesco throws together a cast of characters including the quintessential British middle-class family the Smiths, their guests the Martins, their maid Mary, and a fire chief determined to extinguish all fires — including their hearths. It’s an archetypical absurdist tale and Ionesco displays his profound take on the problems inherent in modern communication.  The Lesson illustrates Ionesco’s comic genius, where insanity and farce collide as a professor becomes increasingly frustrated with his hapless student, and the student with his mad teacher.

Grey Gardens (Musical)
Book by Doug Wright
Music by Scott Frankel
Lyrics by Michael Korie
Directed by Richard Nimke
February 25-27 & March 3-6 at 7:30 p.m.
February 28 at 1:30 p.m.
Kjer Theatre
Grey Gardens brings to life both the delightfully eccentric aunt and the cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.  Once among the brightest names in the pre-Camelot social register, these two women became East Hampton’s most notorious recluses, living in a dilapidated 28-room mansion.  Set in two eras—in 1941 when the estate was in its prime and in 1973 when it was reduced to squalor—the musical tells the alternately hilarious and the heartbreaking story of two indomitable women, Edith Bouvier Beale and her adult daughter “Little” Edie.  Grey Gardens won three Tony Awards in 2007; our production will star UWEC faculty Dr. Mitra Sadeghpour and Dr. Toni Poll-Sorensen in the title roles!

DanceWorks 2010
By the UWEC Concert Dance Company
Directed by Toni Poll-Sorensen
March 18-20 at 7:30 p.m.
Kjer Theatre
The way people move is as much a clue about who they are as the way they speak.  DanceWorks embodies ideas about life’s large and small questions.  The choreographers’ and the dancers’ knowledge of movement is intertwined with all other kinds of knowledge.  Their work is part of the “cultural soup” of today.  Their concert is an immediate corporeal experience in understanding culture.  Leo Tolstoy said, “Art [Dance] is a human activity having for its purpose transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men [and women] have risen.”  Please join us at DanceWorks 2010 for an exploration of our time and culture.

Spring Short Play Festival
April 22-24
Riverside Theatre

Romeo and Juliet
By William Shakespeare
Directed by F. Reed Brown
May 6-8 & 12-15 at 7:30 p.m.
May 9 at 1:30 p.m.
Kjer Theatre
The greatest of all love stories.  Family and gang rivalry.  Young, forbidden love.  An ending you almost can’t bear to watch.  Seen it before?  Not like this.  Join us and celebrate the Bard at his best.  Directed by Illinois Shakespeare Festival veteran F. Reed Brown.  This production will offer weekday matinees and educational materials for participating high schools.