Theatre & Dance News and Upcoming Performances
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Bistline Theatre; Stephens Performing Arts Center (reserved seating)
October 5, 6, 11, 12, & 13, 2012
Can you spell Astrobleme, Hasenpfeffer, Origami, or Weltanschauung? This one-act musical comedy will test a few daring members of the audience nightly. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a hilarious tale of overachievers' angst chronicling the experience of six adolescent outsiders vying for the spelling championship of a lifetime. The show's Tony Award winning creative team has created the unlikeliest of hit musicals about the unlikeliest of heroes: a quirky yet charming cast of outsiders for whom a spelling bee is the one place where they can stand out and fit in at the same time. The musical was conceived by Rebecca Feldman with music and lyrics by William Finn, and is based on the book by Rachel Sheinkin.
RATED PG-13 (contains adult subject material and language)
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Halloween Hooplah, featuring John Pigs Halloween: A Readers’ Theatre
Jensen Hall; Stephens Performing Arts Center (open seating)
October 26th (public school matinee) and 27th (evening)
Celebrate Halloween with Theatre/Dance ISU’s Children’s Readers Theatre: HALLOWEEN HOOPLAH, featuring John Pig’s Halloween by Jan L. Waldron and other delightful stories revolving around All Hallows Eve. Your imagination will be tested as the small cast creates hordes of familiar and unfamiliar trick-or-treaters, haunted characters, and spooky individuals. Shy little John Pig isn't going trick-or-treating at all because those masks and costumes are just too scary!
RATED G
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DanceWorks: Dance ISU in Concert
Bilyeu Theatre; Frazier Hall (open seating)
November 9, 10, 15, 16, & 17, 2012
Choreographed by our renowned dance faculty, DanceWorks premieres new works in Ballet, Tap, Modern, Jazz, Ballroom and Hip Hop. Join us for an evening of diverse dance repertory in the beautifully renovated Chick and Diane Bilyeu Theater located inside of Frazier Hall.
RATED PG
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MISS JULIE: A Theatre ISU Studio Production
Bistline Theatre; Stephens Performing Arts Center (open seating)
December 7 , 8, 10, 2012
LIMITED SEATING AVAILABLE
It only takes a few moments of weakness to change the course of someone’s life. An elaborate game of cat and mouse unfolds in a single evening as young aristocratic Julie entangles herself with her handsome footman Jean. When dealing with to the complications of love, lust, and power, which party is entitled to the upper hand? It’s a matter of life and death.
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Knight of the Burning Pestle
Rogers Theatre; Stephens Performing Arts Center (open seating)
February 8, 9, 14, 15, & 16, 2013
It’s a romp! A theatrical performance is beginning when an outspoken couple, George and Nell, climb onto the stage and insist on seeing plays written for their own tastes. They provide constant commentary on the play the beleaguered theatre company is trying to perform, and insist on inserting their own (not so) swashbuckling hero--their grocery shop apprentice, Rafe, as an inept Renaissance action figure dubbed "The Knight of the Burning Pestle." Nell and George constantly misread and comment upon the scenes of the play-within-the-play, and frequently insert Rafe’s farcically inept action hero scenes. The resulting pastiche seems very contemporary and fresh. Hard to believe the play was written by Francis Beaumont, a contemporary of Shakespeare, and that 2013 marks the 400th anniversary of play’s first major production. We can promise this production will be unlike any Elizabethan/Jacobean play you’ve ever seen!
RATED PG-13 (suggestive language and innuendo of time period)
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The Odd Couple
Rogers Theatre; Stephens Performing Arts Center (open seating)
April 12, 13, 18, 19, & 20, 2013
Felix Ungar, a neurotic, neat freak news writer is thrown out by his wife, and moves in with his friend Oscar Madison, a messy sportswriter. Despite Oscar's problems – careless spending, excessive gambling, a poorly kept house filled with spoiled food – he seems to enjoy life. Felix, however, seems utterly incapable of enjoying anything and only finds purpose in pointing out his own and other people's mistakes. Even when he tries to do so in a gentle and constructive way, his corrections and suggestions prove extremely annoying to those around him. Oscar, his closest friend, feels compelled to throw him out after only a brief time together, though he quickly realizes that Felix has had a positive effect on him.
Rated PG
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Double-Blind Sided
Rogers Theatre; Stephens Performing Arts Center (open seating)
May 17, 18, 23, 24, & 25, 2013
WORLD PREMIERE!
Join us for the world premiere of Double Blind Sided, a contemporary opera inspired, in part, by Franz Kafka’s The Trial. Composer, Robert Fruehwald of Southeast Missouri State University, has created emotionally moving music for Indiana-based poet G.B. Waldschmidt’s witty libretto, creating a non-linear montage of anachronistic scenes connecting Kafka’s novel, Weimar Germany’s slide into Nazism, the Vietnam War, and current economic and political events. With movement-based direction provided by Joséphine A. Garibaldi and Paul Zmolek of Callous Physical Theatre, vocal direction by Diana Livingston Friedley, a music ensemble conducted by Julie Sorensen and live video elements provided by Tom Hallaq, this promises to be a rare and exhilarating evening of total theatre.
RATED PG-13 (strong language)