Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / Sept. 14, 2000, edition 1 / Page 5
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J9F •/ Wj& g jfJ f MM W / y/ / W E . J&flc /' •,, jffljH ’’ Jm • A * T| itgir <ggy Play Makers Repertory Company, the oldest in the state, looks back on 25 years of theater Play Makers Celebrates Past and Future in Anniversary Season By Geoff Wessel Staff Writer The year is 1975. The Vietnam War is ending and, for the first time, UNC enrolls more women than men. And on Jan. 25, Play Makers Repertory Company stages its very first play, Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.” Twenty-five years later, Chapel Hill’s oldest professional theater group is among the most prestigious in the state, Artistic Director David Hammond said. This season’s six plays reflect the com' ay’s history, from its origins at the beginni. 0 of the century to its gods for the future. The company traces its roots back to the Carolina Play Makers, a nonprofessional group formed by University President Edward Kidder Hm COURTESY OF PLAYMAKERS REPERTORY COMPANY Jealous Arnolphe (Ray Dooley) instructs his protege Agnes (Hannah Moon) on how to be an ignorant wife in "The School for Wives." Graham and Professor Frederick Koch in 1918. “Professor Koch’s theory was that everybody had a play to write,” said William Hardy, who worked with Carolina Play Makers as a graduate student in the late 19405. “Out of it came the Carolina folk plays - plays about ordinary people that became a tradition of the Play Makers.” The Carolina Play Makers company was also the birthplace of UNC’s Department of Dramatic Art, one of the oldest in the nation. The Carolina Play Makers nurtured writers like Paul Green and Thomas Wolfe, a founding member of the company bom 100 years ago this October. Wolfe’s play “The Return of Buck Gavin” appeared on the group’s first playbill. Play Makers Repertory Company will be pro ducing Ketti Frings’ dramatization of “Look , -y-' " X v£;‘ ■ v . 3j|Ji \ WMM \W& .W y y ' * ißßilwtor'' 3 ■■■*il sßk jjmk fH ; v -- — — — a. lAt ~ 888 B^ . COURTESY OF PLAYMAKERS REPERTORY COMPANY Beth Hylton, left, and Marc Alexander Stern play slapstick servants Georgette and Alain in Moliere's "The School for Wives." The 17th-century verse comedy opens Play Maker Repertory Company's 25th anniversary season. Homeward, Angel,” Wolfe’s most popular novel, in honor of both the author’s centennial and the company’s anniversary. The 25th-anniversary season will also feature “The Crucible” and Shakespeare’s “All’s Well That Ends Well,” the two plays Play Makers Repertory Company performed in its first year of production. Other plays, such as its current production, Moliere’s “The School for Wives,” reflect the company’s historical commitment to fostering creativity, interest and participation in drama for students and community, Hammond said. Hammond, who has been with Play Makers for 16 years, said the company has changed in many ways over 2 1/2 decades. “It’s evolved steadily,” Hammond said. “The seasons have expanded, the audience has grown Moliere's 'School for Wives' Delights With Humor Play Makers kicks off its 25th season with hilarious wit By Jeremy Hurtz Assistant Arts & Entertainment Editor Play Makers Repertory Company’s silver anniversary season takes off with a highly enjoyable staging of “The School for Wives” that draws out serious elements while maximizing the play’s humor. In the first great verse play from 17th century French playwright Moliere, the action centers around the unraveling of middle-class nobleman Arnolphe’s scheme to marry the perfect wife -one he has raised from toddler hood. Arnolphe (Ray Dooley) has molded his charge, Agnes "The School for Wives" Playmakers Repertory Company Through Oct. 1 (Hannah Moon), into a respectful, naive seamstress on the premise that idiots are less likely to cheat on their husbands. The day before he plans to wed her, he learns of the (perhaps successful) attempts of the foppish stallion Horace (Noel Velez) to bed her. Moon and Velez prove themselves handily in depicting Agnes’ childlike ignorance and Horace’s spry zest. But the show is Dooley’s. His versa tile physical presence provides the play with riotous slapstick. Even more impressive comic timing lends punch to Thursday, September 14, 2000 by more than six times what it was, there’s been a continual investigation of the integration of training and the work.” Hammond said training had been a priority from the beginning, but that the company would stress outreach even more in the future. “It’s a wonderful combination of very skilled profes sionals and young artists, where artists can grow because the kind of work we do is actor-depend ent. The actor is really at the heart of what we do.” Hardy’s wife Martha Nell Hardy, who attend ed graduate school with him and later performed occasionally in Play Makers, said she remem bered benefitting from the training the company offered. “Young people had to learn all of a sudden how to cut it in a professional group,” said Amolphe’s neurotic rantings. The play’s hilarity might also be attributed in part to the excellent trans lation from the French - both because it was an important factor in drawing Hungarian director Laszlo Marton to stage the play in English, and because of the considerable merits of the transla tion itself. Rendered into English by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Richard Wilbur, these couplets contain a range of puns, from gleefully cheeky to devi ously subde. Many of the play’s double enten- \ dres rest on Amolphe’s fear that he has been cuckolded even before his wedding: “Alas, I’m trembling; I fear some further blow/One can discover more than one wants to know.” Later, Agnes naively defends her hospitality toward Horace: “How could I have the conscience to deny/The succor he required, and let him die?” Also masterful is Marton’s direc- tion. He has directed this iced play many times before and under stands it intimately. Marton first staged “The School for Wives” in his native Hungary, which was then a com munist country. He uses various devices to imply a parallel between Amolphe’s intentional stunting of Agnes’ intellec tual development and the way commu nist governments often keep political ideas from the reach of their citizens. This layer of meaning integrates so flawlessly with Moliere’s characters A and situations that one can almost imagine it to be the play- * wright’s original intent. Yet Marton’s symbols are so Page 5 subtle - Amolphe’s house, for instance, is surrounded by an iron gate that rolls back like a curtain -one could watch the play happily without catching on. The veteran director closes the sec ond act with a wordless interplay between Arnolphe and his house. This can’t be found in the original, but it splendidly maintains tension during intermission. Strokes of dramatic genius like this one, coupled with pow erful comic sense, make Marton’s innova tions most welcome. For instance, he makes one brief exchange - involving the throw ing of a flowerpot at Horace’s head - work 4^jk 41*? / P/gyheker* Not Worth Watching James Spader (below) wastes his time and yours in the new serial killer flick "The Watcher" -page? a Hardy, whose full-length play “First String Concerto” was produced in 1950 by the Carolina Play Makers. “Most professional actors are pretty disciplined. The kids, when they work with a group like that, learn what they have to do.” Hardy will be returning to the company to act in the production of “Look Homeward, Angel.” Hammond said other future goals included sponsoring a series of symposia on topics rang ing from writing drama to strategies for reaching wider audiences. “We’re doing more outreach,” he said. “We are interested in an ongoing relationship with our audience.” The Arts & Entertainment Editor can be reached at artsdeskQuncedu. hilariously. The act is meant to occur off-stage; Wilbur advises in his transla tion’s introduction against attempting to portray it. Yet in Marton’s hands, it becomes a highlight of the show. It is ironic that, though Marton has slyly injected into “The School for Wives” a message that is in some respects anti-communist, this play seems to exist socialistically - it belongs equally to two writers, one actor and a director. If Hungary had this much suc cess with the shared-property system, the iron curtain might never have fallen. The Arts & Entertainment Editor can be reached at artsdeskQunc.edu.
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