Theatre Conservatory announces performance calendar for 2012-2013 season

Posted: 04/17/2012

The Theatre Conservatory at Roosevelt University has announced its fall 2012 and spring 2013 schedule of performances to be staged in the University’s seventh floor O’Malley Theatre, 431 S. Wabash Ave., Chicago.

The theatre season begins on Sept. 28, 29 and 30 with an all-male-cast production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which will be directed by Roosevelt Theatre Professor Joel Fink.

An all-female-cast production of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead will be staged Oct. 19, 20 and 21 at O’Malley. A comical off-stage story of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the show is being directed by Theatre Conservatory Instructor Jaclynn Jutting.

The Chicago premiere of the Broadway hit, Lysistrata Jones, a musical based on the book by Douglas Carter Beane, with music and lyrics by Lewis Flynn, rounds out the Theatre Conservatory’s fall season on Nov. 15, 16, 17 and 18. Roosevelt’s Chicago College of Performing Arts (CCPA) is the first to license the show, which will be directed by Theatre Conservatory Instructor Kurt Johns.

“During the upcoming season, we are taking new and different approaches to how we present our work and also in what we are presenting,” said Sean Kelley, director of the Theatre Conservatory who announced the coming season to cheering Theatre Conservatory students on Friday, April 13 in Roosevelt’s Ganz Hall. “We believe our students as well as our audiences will benefit from these experiences,” Kelley said.

Among exciting developments, the Theatre Conservatory will continue a project piloted during the 2011-2012 academic year in which theatre students are being encouraged to write their own 10-minute plays, the best of which will be staged by the Conservatory.

“I’m very excited about our new-works project. We plan to bring outside directors in to work with our students in producing their original plays,” said Kelley.

The Theatre Conservatory will kick off its spring 2013 season with Almost, Maine, a play by John Cariani being staged Feb. 15, 16 and 17 at O’Malley Theatre. The work has been characterized by the New York Post as “Thornton Wilder crossed with “The Twilight Zone,”” in that its characters shine with the joyfulness of love at a time when the northern lights are in the night sky. With this work, “It’s hard not to believe that the wintry air of northern Maine isn’t the cure for heartache,” according to the Post.

The Roosevelt production will be directed by Ray Frewen, assistant professor and assistant director at the Theatre Conservatory.

Then on March 8, 9 and 10, the Theatre Conservatory presents an American classic, The Grapes of Wrath. Based on the novel written by John Steinbeck, the show’s script is by playwright Frank Galati, a member of Steppenwolf Theatre Company and associate director at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. Theatre Conservatory Instructor Steve Scott, associate producer at Goodman Theatre, will direct the show.

Closing out the coming season will be Spring Awakening, a musical with book and lyrics by Steven Sater and music by pop star Duncan Sheik. Based on the play by Frank Wedekind, Spring Awakening is one of Broadway’s hottest rock musicals. At the O’Malley Theatre on April 18, 19, 20 and 21 in 2013, the show will be directed by Theatre Conservatory Associate Professor Luis Perez.

For more information on the coming season, contact Kendall Kelley at kkelley@roosevelt.edu or 312-341-6355 or the Theatre Conservatory Box Office Hotline at 312-341-3831.

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