2009 - 2010 Productions

Book Club Play

By Karen Zacarias

Sometimes the most incredible stories are not the ones between the covers of novels that members of book clubs devour and dissect in communities across America. Sometimes they're within the club itself. At least that's what Karen Zacarias presents in her out-of-control comedy which is getting its third national showing at Doane University this fall. It's a delightful new comedy about people who read books, people who say they read books, and people who prefer books to other people.

Evil Dead the Musical

Music by Christopher Bond, Frank Cipolla, Melissa Morris, & George Reinblatt
Book & Lyrics by George Reinblatt

A musical comedy based on Sam Raimi’s 80s cult-classic horror films, EVIL DEAD the Musical unearths the old familiar story: boy and friends take a weekend getaway at abandoned cabin, boy expects to get lucky, boy unleashes ancient evil spirit, friends turn into Candarian Demons, boy fights until dawn to survive.  As mayhem descends upon this sleepover in the woods, “camp” takes on a whole new with musical numbers like “All the Men in my Life Keep Getting Killed by Candarian Demons,” “Look Who’s Evil Now” and “Do the Necronomicon.”  Buzzing chainsaws and dancing demons add to the frenzy, slaying audiences with a tale of lust, love and dismemberment.

Dead Man’s Cell Phone

By Sarah Ruhl

An incessantly ringing cell phone in a quiet café. A stranger at the next table who has had enough. And a dead man-with a lot of loose ends. So begins Dead Man's Cell Phone, a wildly imaginative new comedy by playwright Sarah Ruhl, recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant and Pulitzer Prize finalist for her play The Clean House. Dead Man's Cell Phone, is an odyssey of a woman forced to confront her own assumptions about morality, redemption, and the need to connect in a technologically obsessed world.

Three Sisters

By Anton Chekhov in a new version by Paul Schmidt

Anton Chekhov is undeniably unique and the four masterpieces he composed during his brief life have inspired the course of contemporary theatre for more than a century. His plays are beautiful ones, comedies he called them, but poignant, full of love and yearning, orchestrated by subtle recurring themes that weave through their four act structure.

Birch trees are almost their signature. And they are large cast plays of a dozen actors. But ideally with no “stars.” Each is part of an ensemble and has a fully developed off-stage life—one full of memories, dreams, hope and fears And each too, no matter the size of his role has a “moment,” a time in which one can identify with the angst of the buried life.