School’s starting again, and we all know what that means. It’s time to put down the TV remotes and pick up the textbooks. Fear not though, you can resuscitate your social life without even leaving the campus. With its lineup of student-produced pieces, this fall’s production teams look to hurl their audiences across every end of the emotional spectrum.
From the comedic jousting of “Ole for Hollywood” to the malevolent musical “Three Penny Opera,” we are given a glimpse of what’s to come from this year’s creative minds.
This semester is also a special occasion. The theater department is “celebrating 50 years of opening nights. There have been plays produced here since we were an offshoot of Cal State L.A.” according to the theater department chair, Peter Grego.
To celebrate the occasion, the depatment “brought back some distinguished alumni for this season,” said Grego. Steven Howard and Bob Miller have returned to CSUN to lend their creative talents to “Three Penny Opera” and “You Can’t Take it With You.” Together the two men have nine Emmy awards for costume design.
Kicking off the school year is “Ole for Hollywood,” which plays from Sept. 29 to Oct. 8. This assortment of politically incorrect comedy sketches promises to keep the audience laughing like its predecessor Latins Anonymous, with an all-star mock-up of characters including Cheech Marinuana, Edward Almost, and Flavor Rave (presented with Courtney Lush).
Director Cris Franco described the show as a fully English spoken mix of “Mad TV” and “Sabado Gigante” with “a few Spanish words that everybody knows.” He added that it’s “an irreverent Latino take on comedy.”
The theater department continues its satirical theme with Eric Overmyer’s “On the Verge”, a tale of three boisterous lady adventurers who embark on an expeditionary journey through time. Marry, Alex and Fanny shed their proper Victorian facades for something less constricting, while pursuing the quest for “Terra Incognito.”
Director James DePaul described this play as “an amazing journey, not just through time, but through language and popular culture.” He also pointed out that Overmyer was a poet whose “language requires the audience to go on the journey with those women.” “On the Verge” hits the stage Nov. 3 and is scheduled to run through Nov. 12.
The Little Theatre, Nordhoff Hall room 121, will house “Three Penny Opera,” a sinister musical about the dark criminal element. Welcome back Mack the Knife as he dashingly terrorizes the cold city streets of London alongside murderers, prostitutes and other thugs. If you don’t feel like watching “Sin City” (again) come here instead and see where the genre began.
“Three Penny Opera” opens Nov. 3rd and plays through Nov. 12.
Finishing up the fall lineup is the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic play “You Can’t Take it With You” which will be performed in the Campus Theatre, in Nordhoff Hall room 100, from Dec. 1 through Dec. 10. The director, Jessica Kubzansky, calls the play a “rocking comedy” about an abnormal family that “marches to the beat of their own drummers.”
In this play, Alice brings her fianc?e to a dinner at her family’s house. The lines between her fianc?’s normalcy and her own family’s abnormality become blurred as everybody realizes that they just live different kinds of lives.
