October 9, 1998

Department of Drama and Speech announces 1998-99 theater season

An original regional premiere and contemporary selections highlight the 1998 - 99 season of Loyola’s theatre produced by the Department of Drama and Speech.

The avant-garde play Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco, directed by Don Brady will open the season October 11, 1998, in the Lower Depths Theater. A cleverly crazy comedy, the creatures throwing up dust and trumpeting primitively may be rhinoceroses debauching from the Lower Depths. An allegory for our time, Rhinoceros pokes fun unremittingly at conventional ideas, established institutions, and all sorts of people, using lighthearted means to remind human beings how easily they can turn beastly.

The Twice-born by Ernest Ferlita, S.J., directed by Trellis Stepter, is based on a Greek myth transferred to New Orleans of the 1800s. Love, betrayal, and intrigue in the steamy South can be found at Marquette Theatre on November 6 - 8 and 12 - 14, 1998. The Twice-born is based on the classic myth of a woman who falls desperately in love with her stepson, first dramatized in ancient Greece by Euripides in Hippolytus then in neoclassical France by Racine in Phaedra. The Twice-born is a translation of the name given to Hippolytus when he was raised from the dead by the Greek god Aesculapius, but in the play it refers in more than one way to rebirth for more than one character, and for that reason The Twice-born is not a tragedy but a tragicomedy.

Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award in 1989, the witty, trenchantly observant contemporary comedy The Heidi Chronicles by Wendy Wasserstein will be produced in the Lower Depths Theater February 23 -28, 1999, under the direction of Janet Shea. Funny, touching, and written with rare grace and sensitivity, the play is a moving examination of the progress of a generation, from the socially politically-active 60s to the success-oriented 80s–a time during which the status of American women underwent profound, and sometimes unsettling change.

The musical Tintypes is in the process of being selected. To be directed by local impresario Ricky Graham, it will rock the boards at Marquette Theater March 12-14 and 18-20, 1999.

Loyola University Theatre focuses on the training of the undergraduate student while offering diverse and exceptional theater entertainment to the Loyola and New Orleans community.

—David Dahlgren, Drama Lab Assistant