FALLING

Direct from Off-Broadway OR Pulitzer Prize-winning Playwright

Two Great Productions Opening This Weekend

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by Lynn Nottage
directed by Don LaCasse
Center for the Performing Arts Theatre at Illinois State University
November 6 – 8 and November 12 – 15, 7:30 p.m.
Matinee: November 9, 2:00 p.m.

It’s the 1930s when we first meet Vera Stark, an African-American maid to a white movie star, Gloria Mitchell, known as “America’s little sweetie pie.” Vera props up the neurotic Gloria even while she and her friends are looking to break into the movies. They know their options are limited to playing slaves, maids or mammies, but Vera captures a part — playing Gloria’s maid in The Belle of New Orleans, a costume drama that becomes a classic. Seventy years later, an academic colloquium gathers to “deconstruct” her legacy, but by that time Vera has vanished. We see her only in clips from a 1973 talk show appearance and in a final coda in which she talks with Gloria during the making of their film. The Hollywood Reporter called the play “a quicksilver construction, blending disparate elements of genre parody, academic cant, broad humor, social comment and legitimate pathos while manipulating layers of irony, some blatant, others transparent, and still more downright subtle.”

Meet Lynn Nottage: November 8 – 9

• Q&A session with Nottage following a performance of her play By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Saturday November 8, Center for the Performing Arts Theatre. Play at 7:30 p.m., Q&A at 10 p.m. Tickets $17 for adults, $14 for faculty/staff, and $12 for students/seniors.
• Discussion with Nottage about her plays, featuring scenes from Ruined, Intimate Apparel, and others, noon-1:30 p.m., Sunday November 9, Center for the Performing Arts Theatre. Free and open to the public.
• Fall Speaker Series presentation featuring Lynn Nottage, 7 p.m. Sunday, November 9, Center for the Performing Arts Theatre. Free and open to the public.

Falling by Deanna Jent
directed by Lori Adams
Heartland Theatre Company in Normal, Illinois
November 6 – 8, 13 – 15, and 20-22 at 7:30 pm
Matinees: November 16 & 23 at 2 pm

How do you love someone who is very difficult to love? Playwright and IWU alum Deanna Jent has called Falling “a day in the life of a ‘typical’ family who are caring for a teenage son with severe autism.” As Josh gets older and bigger, his parents struggle to handle him, his sister wishes she had a family like everyone else’s, and his grandmother can’t understand how things got so out of control. ISU’s Lori Adams, who directed this heartbreaking family drama in sold-out, award-winning runs in St. Louis and New York, now brings Falling home to Heartland. [Mature Themes/Mature Language/Not Recommended for Children]

Meet Deanna Jent: November 15 – 16

• Discussion following with Director Lori Adams and Playwright Deanna Jent

Read the Pantagraph Article by Dan Craft

Photo: Jesse Folks for the Pantagraph