Shakespeare, comedy, drama highlight UW-Green Bay Theatre’s 2012-13 season
UW-Green Bay Theatre has announced its 2012-13 season, a varied lineup of performances that comes on the heels of two busy, successful years for the program.
The new season, beginning in October, is a varied mix of musical comedy, true drama, Shakespeare and “more than a few chicken jokes.” It follows the highly successful 2010-11 production of Almost, Maine, which earned numerous regional and national awards; and the April 2012 hit Cabaret, the large-scale UW-Green Bay Theatre and Music production that was Theatre’s first in a decade on the mainstage of the Weidner Center for the Performing Arts.
The 2012-13 season kicks off with a production designed to engage campus and community in the University’s yearlong Common Theme, a program designed to engage the campus and community in the ideals of a liberal arts education and the UW-Green Bay interdisciplinary mission.
“We will be opening this season with a unique theatrical experience that celebrates the creative spirit, in keeping with this year’s campus Common Theme: Creativity, Innovation and Vision,” said Prof. Laura Riddle, managing director for University Theatre productions. “Robert Rauschenberg was a visionary, highly influential visual artist. The play bobrauschenbergamerica uses Rauschenberg’s style of combining found materials to create a new work of art, allowing the audience to consider objects, ideas and relationships in a new light.”
Theatre’s 2012-13 season musical, Gone Missing, also is a new work, Riddle noted, and the program is adding DanceWorks, its annual dance concert, to its mainstage season. Directed by UW-Green Bay instructor Denise Carlson-Gardner, DanceWorks features original choreography by faculty and students in a variety of styles.
The 2012-13 schedule is as follows:
bobrauschenbergamerica, by Charles L. Mee; directed by Laura Riddle
Jean
Weidner Theatre, Weidner Center, Oct. 18-20 and 24-27, 2012
bobrauschenbergamerica is a fantastical road trip through the American landscape, in the second half of the 20th century. The play, a collage of text, images, sound and spectacle, was inspired by the style of Robert Rauschenberg, one of America’s most influential visual artists. Traveling easily through time, the play is a glorious combine of appropriated ideas, writings, visual imagery and more than a few chicken jokes …
Gone Missing, Created by The Civilians; written by Steven Cosson from interviews by The Company; music and lyrics by Michael Friedman; directed by Associate Prof. John Mariano; musical direction by Assistant Prof. Courtney Sherman; choreography by Denise Carlson-Gardner
University Theatre, Theatre Hall, Nov. 15-17, 2012
A new musical comedy created by the acclaimed New York theatre The Civilians, Gone Missing is a revue-style musical based on interviews with real people. This collection of very personal stories of things “gone missing”— everything from keys, personal identification and a Gucci pump to family heirlooms, your dog and your mind — creates a unique tapestry of the ways in which we deal with loss in our lives.
These Shining Lives, by Melanie Marnich; directed by John Mariano
Jean Weidner Theatre, Feb. 28 and March 1-2 and 6-9, 2013
In the mid 1920s, watch faces were painted using radium paint by women considered expendable by their employers. Serious health problems, including cancer, led to a lawsuit in which the company attempted to cover up the effects of the now-dying “Radium Girls.” This story chronicles the strength and determination of women who refused to allow the company to kill their spirits — or endanger the lives of those who came after them.
DanceWorks, directed by Denise Carlson-Gardner
This performance is a dance concert of faculty and student choreography representing a diverse medley of styles.
University Theatre, April 5-6, 2013
Love’s Labor’s Lost, by William Shakespeare; guest directed by Gale Childs Daly
University Theatre, April 26-27 and May 2-4, 2013
One of Shakespeare’s earliest comedies, Love’s Labor’s Lost is set in Navarre, where the King and his three lords swear an oath to scholarship, fasting and abstaining completely from the company of women. Meanwhile, the Princess of France has arrived to visit the King. Hosting the Princess and her entourage in a remote camp, the King soon finds himself love struck. Plots to woo the Princess lead to mistaken identities, pranks and broken oaths.
To purchase tickets, or for more information about UW-Green Bay Theatre, visit www.uwgb.edu/theatre.
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