A Welcome from Nick Mangano, It is with pleasure that I welcome you to the Department of Theatre Arts and to our 2007-08 Main Stage Season. Through our top notch undergraduate and graduate programs, encompassing Theatre, Dance and Media Arts in a Liberal Arts context, we are dedicated to expanding the minds and imaginations of our students. We foster rigorous investigation, interdisciplinary training, creative application, and bold risk taking. We nurture the growth of not just the theatre practitioner, but of the human being through awareness of the multifaceted world in which we live, multicultural viewpoints, personal values, the role of theatre in society, and above all respect for individualism and collaboration.
|
|
We offer a terrific range of dramatic literature on our stages, including some of the newest voices in the American Theatre. We begin this season with The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek by one of the most interesting and provocative authors writing for the theatre today, Naomi Wallace. Trestle launches our exploration of America during the Great Depression which we will continue in the spring with an American classic: John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. I am excited to examine an important era in our history with two very different stories told through the eyes of two unique writers: one from gripping first-hand experience in 1939; the other writing sixty years later through a haunting poetic sensibility. Reflecting the world in which we live from such distinct angles and styles is one of the many inspirations of the theatre. Our season also offers the raucous and invigorating mosaic bobrauschenbergamerica by another exceptional contemporary playwright, Charles L. Mee. Mee shows us varied slices of America as he stirs our senses and shakes up our perceptions of art, life, love and culture. Finally, we present a timely classic comedy, Tartuffe by Molière. Though from the 17th century European canon, Tartuffe, like all great classics,will strike a chord in modern America, where the topic of religion and faith can still generate some of the liveliest debate and reflection. It is sifted here through the hilarity and effervescent style of a comic genius. We are committed to providing our audience with meaningful live theatre experiences and to the education of our students in one of the most vital arts forms in our culture. The live theatre experience is one that cannot be replicated anywhere else. Here a community comes together to share in a singular event that affirms in myriad ways our collective human experience.
|
|
Nick Mangano |