USC Theatre Presents Show for Young Audiences with Sideways Stories from Wayside School Adaptation

From our Friends at USC Department of Theatre and Dance:

There’s an early October treat in store for Columbia’s young audiences, as the USC Theatre Program will present a live stage version of Louis Sachar’s beloved book series, Sideways Stories from Wayside School, October 6-14 at Drayton Hall Theatre.  

Special show times are 7pm Thursdays and Fridays, 11am and 3pm on Saturdays and 3pm on the first Sunday.  Admission is $15 for students, $20 for USC faculty/staff, military, and seniors 60+, and $22 for the public. Tickets may be purchased online at sc.universitytickets.com. Drayton Hall Theatre is located at 1214 College St.  

Things are always a bit wonky at the 30-story Wayside Elementary – the building’s only one classroom wide, for starters, and its 19th floor has mysteriously ceased to exist. It’s in mean Mrs. Gorf’s top-floor class, however, where things have gone completely sideways. Known for punishing students by magically turning them into apples, she finds herself the victim of her own spell and soon becomes lunch for a hungry, passing teacher!  Adapted by John Olive and incorporating stories from the best-selling children’s books, Sideways Stories from Wayside School is a wild, wacky adventure full of fun and surprises, with some valuable lessons to share along the way. 

Guest artist Ilene Fins is directing the production.  A veteran director, actor, and teacher, Fins has a long history of work in the children’s theatre realm, with many years of experience teaching and directing at Seattle Children’s Theatre and Harrison School for the Arts, a performing arts high school in Florida. Fins is currently a Professor of Theatre at Midlands Technical College. 

“It's this absurd look at life in an elementary school,” Fins says about the show’s zany plot. But ultimately, she adds, the story contains messages about inclusion and embracing diversity. “All the child characters in the play have special traits, divergent ways of thinking or behaving, that can make them feel like outsiders. But at Wayside School, it's all part of the magic and the love. If you're a little wonky here, you belong.” 

The USC Theatre Program has a decades-long history of producing plays in a variety of genres and styles, from the heightened language plays of Shakespeare to contemporary stories from modern playwrights. Professor Peter Duffy, who heads the M.A.T. in Teaching Theatre degree track at the university, says offering a show specifically for young audiences fits perfectly with the theatre program’s mission. 

“A lot of young actors get their start working in theatre for youth, so this is great opportunity to get them on-the-job training,” he says. “The worlds that you get to create and live in [in children’s theatre] are so imaginative and otherworldly. It’s an incredible chance to dig into their craft – for designers to create elaborate worlds and for actors to inhabit big characters, yet still convey truth in these imaginary circumstances.” 

The benefits are just as rewarding for the community, he says. “There are a lot of interesting studies that have shown that exposure to theatre helps kids’ connection to creativity and imagination, and there is even some work around emerging literacy skills that are connected to theatre. It’s also an incredible thing for families to be able to enjoy together.” 

“Doing a play for young audiences is a brilliant way to remind us what the value of theater is, but also open the door to youngsters to be able to see what's possible and what storytelling can look like in lots of ways,” Duffy adds. “So much storytelling now is two-dimensional through a handheld device or on a screen. To be able to be in a three-dimensional space, to share a story with a family, is a pretty unique thing to do. And there aren't a lot of opportunities to do that.” 

Fins concurs.  “Theatre for young audiences is, to me, the most important theatre because this is what builds the audiences of tomorrow.”  

Cast in the production are undergraduate students Eliza Dojan, Cameron Eubanks, Lavender Grant, Sunni Greene, Paul Hommel, Vaibhav Kishore, Rowland Marshall, Phillip Parker, Asher Thompson, Olivia Wamai and Kennedy Williams.  Designers for the show are graduate students Ruihan Liu (scenic), Andrew Burns (costume) and Lorna Young (lighting), with guest artist Danielle Wilson creating the sound design. Guest artist Joseph Boyd, an alum of the USC dance program, is choreographer for the production. 

It all adds up to a special offering that will provide audiences of multiple generations a chance to share the pure fun and magic of theatre together, Fins says. “You'll have a blast. It’s an unexpected story that will take you into a world that is flipped on its head. You've got to experience it to believe it.” 

For more information on Sideways Stories from Wayside School or the theatre program at the University of South Carolina, contact Kevin Bush by phone at 803-777-9353 or via email at bushk@mailbox.sc.edu. 

USC Theatre Takes on Radium Women in Play THESE SHINING LIVES - February 25 - March 4 at Longstreet Theatre

Theatre major Maddie Niles as Catherine Donohue, a character based on a real woman of the same name who fought for justice after contracting radium poisoning from her employer. Photo - Jason Ayer

From our Friends at USC Theatre and Dance -

The University of South Carolina Dept. of Theatre and Dance will present These Shining Lives, a drama based on the tragic yet inspiring true story of the “radium girls,” February 25 – March 4 at Longstreet Theatre.

Based on actual events, These Shining Lives reaches back almost a century to uncover a harrowing history that still has profound resonance to our society today.  Through poetic and powerful language, playwright Melanie Marnich tells the fateful story of female factory workers in the 1920s hired to decorate watch faces with glow-in-the-dark, radium-based paint, a substance their employer refers to as “medicinal.”  As they begin developing serious illnesses from radiation exposure, they soon realize the company’s complicity and wage a legal battle to bring it to justice.  The case would go on to have far-reaching consequences on workers’ and women’s rights in our own time.  

Guest artist Ibi Owolabi, an Atlanta-based professional theatre director, has returned to campus to helm the production.  Owolabi previously directed You on the Moors Now in April 2021 for the university.

The director says the experience of the women portrayed in the play feels especially relevant now, as we enter the third year of a pandemic that has so drastically affected the way we live and work.

“If we were to do this play even two years ago, our mindset would have been so different,” she says.  “After experiencing the pandemic for as long as we have, I think we understand fear in regard to mortality and sickness a lot differently than we did before.” 

The story’s parallels to recent pandemic-related labor issues also resonates with the director.  “[The pandemic] has put things in perspective,” she explains.  “The ‘great resignation’ that we’ve seen happen recently, with people not accepting the same working conditions they did before the pandemic, reminds me of how our perspective changes when we’re faced with a life and death situation.”

The historical facts of the “radium girls” case can seem like a horror story.  Employees of the U.S. Radium Corporation, the women were required to keep their paintbrushes sharp by “pointing” them between their lips.  With repeated exposure over several years, radium seeped into the workers’ bones, causing anemia, jaw decay, spinal collapse and, in some cases, death. However, Owolabi says Marnich’s retelling of the story isn’t all gruesome details and tragic outcomes.

“What I think this play does so well is that it focuses on the humanity of these women in addition to the facts.  [Marnich] unfurls the history in a way that is suspenseful but also feels like a personal journey.”

Cast in the production are undergraduates Jesse Breazeale, Zoe Chan, Maddie Niles, Emily Paton and Alec Thorn, and graduate theatre student Isabella Stenz.  The production’s designers include graduate theatre design students Ashley Jensen (scenic) and Kyla Little (costume), undergraduate media arts students Aubrey Eastin and Rylee Milz (projections), theatre design professor Jim Hunter (lighting), and guest artist Danielle Wilson (sound).

Owolabi sums it all up as “a riveting look at what seemed like a shining opportunity for these women.  It’s about what it means to assert your individuality and to assert your humanity when you’re faced with a corporate giant.”

“I think the playwright really gave these women justice.”

Show time is at 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, with additional 3 p.m. matinee performances on Saturday, February 26 and Sunday, February 27. Admission is $15 for students, $20 for UofSC faculty/staff, military, and seniors 60+, and $22 for the public. Tickets may be purchased online at sc.universitytickets.com. In keeping with university safety protocols, masks will be required of all audience members, actors and crew, and seating will be limited to allow for appropriate social distancing between all patrons. 

For more information on These Shining Lives or the theatre program at the University of South Carolina, contact Kevin Bush by phone at 803-777-9353 or via email at bushk@mailbox.sc.edu. 

REVIEW: Scenes from Metamorphoses, USC Theatre

I have to admit that I was surprised to see that the play, Scenes from Metamorphoses, based on the myths of Ovid by Mary Zimmerman, was being offered as part of the USC Department of Theatre and Dance’s season. My friend Ed Madden and I, along with our spouses, saw the play last weekend during its brief engagement, October 28-31, at the Booker T. Washington Lab Theatre on Wheat Street. Having had the opportunity to see the multi-award-winning production at Circle in the Square Theatre on Broadway in 2002, my memories of the experience were profoundly moving, and I remember being as impacted by the starkness of the minimalist set and costuming as I was by the power of the script and the heft of the acting and direction. The lighting in the Broadway production was so finely achieved that it almost became a character on its own.

Was it a good idea for a university to present a project as robust as Scenes from Metamorphoses? I’m still not sure.

A highly sophisticated project, Zimmerman refined her Metamorphoses over years of workshopping productions beginning in 1996 at Northwestern University. By the time it arrived on Broadway in 2002, the final iteration of the project was something pristine and exquisite. A compelling combination of the robust and the delicate that captivated audiences by reminding us of that conflict and resolution—hence, change—are both timeless and essential to life. The fact that Zimmerman also directed the play during its years on and off-Broadway should not be overlooked in terms of the organic flow in which she was able to offer her production.

While the title suggests that the presentation is an incomplete set of vignettes, in reality, we saw the play with all characters, as written, except with fewer actors. Based on David Slavitt’s 1994 translation of Ovid’s Metamorphosis the play features Cosmogony, Midas, Alcyone and Ceyx, Erysichthon and Ceres, Orpheus and Eurydice, Narcissus, Pomona and Vertumnus, Myrrha, Phaeton, Apollo, Eros and Psyche, and Baucis and Philemon. Zimmerman selected the myths to dramatize in order to replicate the rise and fall of a successful project, with all elements needed to create the arc of a well-accomplished stage play. Her use of the myth of King Midas, before his startling conflict and after his ultimate resolution represent the state of equilibrium that the play opens with and circles back to at the end.

The USC presentation featured Asaru Buffalo, Ezri Fender, Cameron Giordano, Cady Gray, Brighton Grice, Carly Siegel, and Nakao Zurlo, with direction by graduate student, Tiffani Hagan.

There were a number of challenges facing the team presenting Metamorphoses at USC last weekend. The greatest may have been the fit of this play for a group of undergraduate students. It can be difficult to discern where strengths and weaknesses come from—whether it is the actors or the director—without the conceit of knowing what the actors have brought to the table on their own. There was certainly an inconsistency in the performances with some players taking on a conscious meta theme to their interpretations and others a more lackadaisical approach. It was difficult to tell whether some of the nonchalance was prescriptive or organic. Others seemed uncomfortable but I’m not sure if their discomfort came from their roles or their own skin.

Madden made particular note of this. “One of the most interesting lines to me is: ‘You know what happened.’ The play is self-conscious about the fact that we know most of the stories. The art of the play lies in how they are put together and in how they are acted.” 

Given the use of the meta-dramatic theme, Madden, who rated the story of Narcissus as among the most beautifully told, based on the “gestures and movement of the actors,” but wondered “why a woman held the mirror for Narcissus—given his love for his own male beauty, it is the one spot in the entire play that could have included a queer element.”

The greatest challenge to this interpretation of Metamorphoses may be found in the absence of the pool of water which is central to every story line and is, in fact, the touchstone of the play. Originally written to have positioned center-stage a large, multi-use body of water serving as a character in and of itself—a place to wash, the ocean, the river Styx, and more—the pool  of water should act as the central part of the set, as a prop, as a destination, as a central unifying thread, and as the greatest symbol of change, or metamorphosis, itself. While this interpretation of the play uses a wooden barrel in that role, the barrel also becomes a receptacle for props and discarded clothing, and it is cast aside and ultimately moved off stage in what felt irreverent to this viewer.

The height of the performance, for both Madden and I, was the telling of the story of Phaeton, son of Helios, who hounded his father into letting him drive his chariot of horses across the sky creating the daily rising and falling of the sun. Phaeton’s failure to handle such a daunting task results in the scorching of the land and other earthly consequences as the boy had taken on more than he was capable of accomplishing. We both appreciated the role of the therapist who offered, as Madden says, “a way to understand the myth, and yet the very human story if the teenage boy.”

The epitaph on Phaeton’s tomb is ironically said to read, “Here Phaeton lies who in the sun-god's chariot fared. And though greatly he failed, more greatly he dared.” And while the cast and crew of Mary Zimmerman’s Scenes from Metamorphoses certainly did not fail, there is no doubt that they grew from the experience in the face of so many challenges presented them, not the least of which were the challenges they each wore on their faces—the very emblem of creating performance art in the days of Covid-19: their masks. As Madden says, the masks “Made some of the language difficult to understand, especially if the music was too loud, and may have caused some over-acting because the actors could not depend otherwise on facial movements to carry emotion.”

Kudos to the cast and crew of USC’s Metamorphoses. Every theatre artist should be so lucky to as to have the opportunity to make this play a part of their artistic lives.

-Cindi Boiter with Ed Madden

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USC Opens Neil Simon's Rumors at Drayton Hall Friday Oct., 15th

The University of South Carolina Theatre Program will launch its 21/22 season in uproarious style October 15-22 with a production of Neil Simon’s raucous comedy Rumors at Drayton Hall Theatre.  

Show time is at 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, with additional 3 p.m. matinee performances on Saturday, October 16 and Sunday, October 17. Admission is $15 for students, $20 for UofSC faculty/staff, military, and seniors 60+, and $22 for the general public. Tickets may be purchased online at sc.universitytickets.com. Drayton Hall Theatre is located at 1214 College St., across from the historic UofSC Horseshoe. In keeping with university safety protocols, masks will be required of all audience members, actors and crew, and seating will be limited to allow for appropriate social distancing between all patrons.  

Sharp-edged wit meets madcap farce in legendary playwright Simon’s hit 1988 comedy.  When the first pair of guests arrive for an anniversary party at the opulent home of Charlie Brock, the Deputy Mayor of New York, they find their host unconscious, shot in the head (well…the ear lobe), and his wife missing.  Wanting to protect Charlie – and themselves – from potential scandal, they fabricate a lie to tell the rapidly-arriving partygoers, setting in motion an ever-more-hilarious series of cover-ups, misunderstandings and mishaps. "Has nothing on its mind except making the audience laugh." - The New York Times

Recipient of the Pulitzer Prize (1991) and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor (2006), in addition to numerous Tony® awards, Neil Simon was one of the most successful writers of the 20th century, with hits like The Odd Couple, Barefoot in the Park, and Biloxi Blues becoming long-running successes on stage and screen.  His work has become especially personal to director David Britt, who counts Rumors as the seventh Simon play he’s helmed in the last decade.

“I am a student of Neil Simon and his writing,” says Britt.  “When I was growing up, he was as popular a playwright as anybody, and I see his influence in everything I’ve seen since. I will always pay tribute to him.”

There’s an old expression, ‘I dropped my basket,’ meaning you've lost it...  Everybody’s basket gets dropped in Rumors!

Although the playwright told The New York Times that Rumors was his “first farce” and “completely different for me,” the play’s humor is still classic Simon. “It’s a sarcasm that many of us in the South may not be familiar with,” says Britt of the Simon’s signature one-liners.  “Our sarcasm is often very passive-aggressive, but his is straight to the point.  It’s given and received with the same attitude.”

In keeping with the classic form of farce, Rumors’ comedy is rooted in characters who become completely unraveled in the wake of fast-moving chaos and absurdity.  However, Britt says that Simon’s heightened characters are still totally relatable.

“Having read about Simon and the circles he ran in I think these characters are people he would have attended parties with.  There’s no one in this play who is an unbelievable person and that’s what we’re going for -- to hold up a mirror and say, ‘Look how crazy we all are under pressure.’”  

“There’s an old expression, ‘I dropped my basket,’ meaning you've lost it,” he adds with a laugh.  “Everybody’s basket gets dropped in Rumors!”

Britt’s production will bring its own special sense of zaniness to the proceedings, transporting audiences back to the “decade of excess” with a 1980s design aesthetic filled with shoulder pads, big jewelry and even bigger hair. “This play is not only a farce, but a comedic commentary on the socio-economic status of the wealthy,” says graduate design student Kyla Little, costume designer for the production.  “Material possessions have an interesting way of changing the confidence of the human psyche and I take pleasure in exaggerating that through the aesthetic trends of that era.”

Additional designers for the production include Professor Jim Hunter (scenic), graduate design student Lawrence Ware (lighting), undergraduate media arts student Alisha De Jesus (makeup) and guest artist Danielle Wilson (sound.)  

The show’s cast includes students Brandon Badinski, John Boulay, Jesse Breazeale, Zoe Chan, Billy Cheek, Koby Hall, Andie Lowe, Caroline McGee, Jordan Pontelandolfo and Isabella Stenz.

“It’s non-stop laughter for the audience to watch,” promises Britt.  “There isn’t any message beyond just enjoying yourself watching these people who think they’re so collected become so uncollected in a matter of minutes.”  

“Just come and have a good time.”

For more information on Rumors or the theatre program at the University of South Carolina, contact Kevin Bush by phone at 803-777-9353 or via email at bushk@mailbox.sc.edu.   

 Courtesy of UofSC Department of Theatre and Dance

REVIEW: Much Ado About Nothing at USC

Come, come, we are friends: let's have a dance ere
we are married, that we may lighten our own hearts
and our wives' heels. — Benedick, Much Ado About Nothing

In a cheeky twist on the title of Shakespeare’s comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, The UofSC Department of Theatre and Dance’s production of this First Folio play actually creates quite a bit of ado, or fuss, about a fairly straight-forward connivance—which was surely Shakespeare’s intention given that he wrote an entire play about a pair of vengeful practical jokes. But while this reviewer is nothing if not a fan of whimsy and irreverence, giving this production exceedingly high scores on the application of both, for some viewers the added bells and whistles might feel a bit gimmicky in places. That said, I had more fun at this production than at any of Shakespeare’s plays I’ve had the good fortune of seeing performed anywhere other than at the Globe or the Sam Wannamaker playhouse in London.

The key to the success of this production is its accessibility. And it is precisely the extraneous bonuses—the use of pop music, the incongruous costuming by Kristy Leigh Hall, the full-company pop-up choreography by Andre Megerdichian—that break through what sometimes seem to be immovable obstacles in the way of fully appreciating a play that was written in 1599 a full four hundred and twenty years later.

The reality is that enjoying Shakespeare requires work for even the above-average audience member. From the early modern English language, which was less than 100 years old when Shakespeare created the majority of his works (and subsequently recorded a few thousand words for the first time in history), to the patriarchal influences on casting, plot, and whether characters live happily ever after or not, fully appreciating Shakespeare can surely be enhanced by tactics and ploys that make the purpose of the play more meaningful to the audience.  

Perhaps director Dustin Whitehead had this in mind when he cast against gender several times in this production.

In the original play, Don John is the bastard brother, if you’ll pardon the anachronism, of Don Pedro (Nicholas Good). Don John, played with just the right amount of eye-rolling, cynicism, and indifference by Beck Chandler, carries a chip on his shoulder and likes to cause trouble where there is none. It is Don John’s interferences in the happiness of Claudio, a follower of Don Pedro, as he attempts to court and marry Hero, the daughter of Leonato who is the governor of Messina, a friend of Don Pedro’s, and the party’s host for a month of post-war R and R.

Through the machinations of Don John and his wicked sidekicks Borachio, played like sleaze in a leisure suit by Jacob Wilson, and Conrade, played against gender by Kinzie Correll, Claudio (Cameron Giordano) is led to believe that Hero (Ezri Fender) has been unfaithful. In a real dick move, Claudio waits until the wedding to accuse his betrothed of her dishonor, making the kind of scene that, in the 21st century, might more likely result in a well-aimed kick to the groin by the bride-to-be, but in Shakespeare’s day ostensibly causes Hero to fall out, faint, and, for all we know as we’re watching the play, die.

Here is where the cleverness of casting against gender, consequently creating a far more accessible message, comes in. Rather than cast Leonato as a man, Whitehead casts Leonata as a woman and has her played with great passion by Caroline Clarke. While at first Leonata condemns her daughter to death for her perceived transgression, the character ultimately becomes devoted to proving the innocence of her daughter and in what would have been read, with a male in the role, as a patriarchal defense of a family’s bloodline, the act becomes a feminist defense of a young woman’s integrity by a female champion.

Along those same lines, it is Friar Francis, played by Susan Swavely, who believes and defends Hero all along, and it is Constable Dogberry and partner, Verges, played brilliantly and also against gender by Cassidy Spencer and Lily Heidari respectively, who capture Conrade and Borachio and bring them to justice before Claudio and Don Pedro, clearing Hero’s name.

Consequently we have a version of the conflict resolution in Much Ado in which women band together to defend another unjustly accused woman, and I’m not sure what could be more 2019 than that.

It should be noted that in an overarching subplot of the play, which most might argue typically eclipses the primary plot, Beatrice, who is the niece of Leonata, engages in a classic Hepburn and Tracy/Muldur and Scully/Ross and Rachel romance with Lord Benedick, a soldier from Padua who fought in Pedro’s army. The couple, strongly played by Jordan Postal as Beatrice and Anthony Currie as Benedick, carry the weight of the characters well and shine particularly brightly during a musical interlude, set to an instrumental rendition of Lennon and McCartney’s “Come Together.” This is one of those places where Whitehead’s bonus bells and whistles really pay off. It is in this added intermezzo that the audience gets to witness the push and pull and all the acrobatics of a real love affair working its way into existence. Whereas Claudio declares his love for Hero and she basically says, Ok – Why Not? Beatrice and Benedick are strong-minded individuals who not only aren’t looking for love, they don’t want to identify themselves when love finds them. The audiences who see this version of Much Ado come away seeing the Beatrice and Benedick romance as real and meaningful rather than almost spiteful and trivial when depicted by dialogue alone.

It is, in many ways, the music that makes this performance progress particularly cohesively for a cast of primarily undergrad actors. And the stand out actors are the ones who begin the production in another added scene when Spencer and Heidari take the stage as the comically inept watchwomen sweeping up, preparing for the day, and ultimately singing and accompanying themselves on piano, as do several characters throughout the play. Having seen these young women perform lead roles this summer in Montgomery at Trustus Theatre it was a gift to see them together again. Spencer rises well to the traditionally comical challenge the character of Dogberry demands and Heidari is right there with her.

The lone MAT student, Amber Coulter, in the role of Margaret, also offers a stand-out performance, of note not only due to her comic timing but her confidence and ease of delivery, as well. Having performed in seven shows on the main stage at USC, (this reviewer remembers her from Top Girls and The Crucible), Coulter is a fine example of the kind of theatre artist the UofSC Department of Theatre and Dance can produce.

Though not a perfect performance—Benedick could project more, for example—the choreographed (or were they blocked?) numbers made up in enthusiasm for what they lacked in technique, and Michael Taylor in the role of Ursula wore a skirt like nobody’s business. Audience members laughed, tapped their feet, and smiled broadly at the closing number. It was a joyous performance and, at the end, we could ask for little more.

The performance runs Thursdays through Sundays until November 9th at Longstreet Theatre and tickets are available at tickets.vendini.com

-Cindi Boiter

Cindi Boiter is the editor of Jasper Magazine and the executive director of the Jasper Project.