BRAVO! WINTER/SPRING 2004
VERY LITTLE THEATRE
The Very Little Theatre
presents
The Lion
in Winter
by James Goldman
Reva Kaufman, director
Jan. 9-11*, 15-18*, 22-25*
30-31 * Sunday Matinees
Tickets: $12
Students $9 on Thursdays
Box office open 2:00-5:30
Wed.-Sat., 2350 Hilyard St.
www.TheVLT.com
344-7751
AUDITIONS
CABARET
The award-winning musical
by John Kander & Fred Ebb
Directed by Michael Watkins
Sat., Jan. 10 • Noon
Sun., Jan. 11 • 6 p.m.
2350 Hilyard St.
Roles for men and women of
all ages (18+); prepare a short
song, be prepared to dance.
ALL ROLES AVAILABLE!
For more information, call
686-1177
most conventional theater standards, yet
editing O’Neill’s writing is difficult. “He
repeats things, but always in a different
context,” says Boyd. He tried to make edits,
yet found it nearly impossible.
Knowing Cantero had been a master of
working with O’Neill’s words, Boyd took a
leap of faith. He wrote to Nick Tsacrios,
Cantero’s surviving partner, asking if there
existed a script with Cantero’s cuts. What
Boyd received back from Tsacrios was not
only a finely edited script, but also notes with
blocking and light cues, all neatly typed.
“It was such a score,” says Boyd, not
intending any pun. The lyrical Moon opens
Jan. 28 and runs through Feb. 15.
lso in January, Lord Leebrick
Theatre Company opens Far
Away. Caryl Churchill’s (Top
Girls, Cloud 9) 50-minute one act work
explores the topic of ethnic cleansing and
questions humankind’s relationship to the
planet.
Directed by John Schmor (Ship of Fools
for UT, Romeo and Juliet for LLTC), Far
Away stars Elena Stylos as Young Joan,
Barbara Embree as Harper, Bruce
McArthur as Todd, and Kim Bates as Older
Joan to create an exhilarating journey that
takes the audience through a tale woven
with metaphor.
“The title works on many levels” says
LLTC Artistic Director Craig Willis.
Is it long ago and far away that such
things occurred? Or is it so far away geo-
graphically we don’t need to worry about it?
Willis says the show speaks not just to the
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eradication of ethnic groups, but explores
any hate, whether it’s toward the Axis of Evil
or from those opposed to gay marriage.
The play doesn’t raise the issue of hate
murder directly, but is composed of parable
and allegory. “What theater can do beauti-
fully,” says Willis, “is prompt discussion,
thought and question.”
Schmor had proposed the play last year
to LLTC AD Corey Pearlstein, who had
previously directed Cloud 9 at the space.
He gave it the go ahead.
Willis says it’s one of the best chosen
works of the season. Unlike Churchill's Top
Girls, which was nicely produced by UT
several years ago, but whose second act is
much weaker than the first, and Cloud 9,
whose production has its challenges, Far
Away is a “tightly woven script with a more
developed plot,” he says, despite its 50-
minute duration.
Far Away opens Jan. 7 and continues
through Jan 24. UO professor Linda Kintz
will moderate a talk-back after the Sunday,
Jan. 11 matinee.
Michelle Morain & Tony DeBruno star in WRT’s
A Moon for the Misbegotten.
— 75th SEASON —
Boyd had met Jose Cantero, the foremost
interpreter of O’Neill.
“He could get rights to what no one else
could, even though he wasn’t American,
but Panamanian,” says Boyd. Something
about Cantero and his connection with
O’Neill impressed O’Neill’s widow,
Carlotta, however, and she gave him rights.
“We became good friends; we just
clicked,” says Boyd. And when Boyd came
to Eugene and formed WRT, Cantero was
slated to direct the opening production. Not
Moon, “because he was loyal to another
actress who’d played Josie,” Boyd says, but
another chosen work.
Sadly, Cantero passed away before that
promise was realized. And Moon, to which
Boyd had already procured rights, was
revived on Broadway, thereby freezing
those rights.
To be directing and producing Moon this
season, says Boyd, puts him into an “emo-
tional place.”
But here comes the magic.
The script of Moon is long, too long by
lso on the not-so-distant horizon is
a tremendous undertaking: Actors
Cabaret collaborates with LCC in
presenting The Laramie Project by Moises
Kaufman, directed by Joe Zingo. Running
just one weekend, Feb. 27-29 at LCC’s
main campus, the production will include
up to 40 area actors.
The play chronicles the 1998 Wyoming
murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shephard,
a gay man who was kidnapped, severely
beaten and left to die in the middle of the
prairie outside Laramie, Wyo.
His body was discovered the next day,
and he died several days later.
Playwright Kaufman and members of
the Tectonic Theater Project made six trips
to Laramie over the course of a year and a
half in the aftermath of the beating and dur-
ing the trial of the two young men accused
of killing Shepard. They conducted more
than 200 interviews with the people of the
town; some of whom were directly connect-
ed to the case. Kaufman and Tectonic
Theater members have constructed a deeply
moving theatrical experience from these
interviews and their own experiences.
Time magazine called The Laramie
Project “One of the 10 best plays of 2000”;
and it was nominated for the Drama Desk
Award for Unique Theatrical Experience.
ACE founders Jim Roberts and Joe Zingo
say, “It is our goal with The Laramie Project
to involve more than 40 of the best actors in
the Eugene/Springfield area to commit to the
concept that what happened in Laramie,
Wyo., will never happen here.”
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