Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
We chose the play "The Spoon River Project" because it's a new version of an old play.
Uh, which is actually, an old version of a series of poems by a man named Edgar Lee Masters.
And he wrote these poems as a sort of a dedication to the American spirit, this small town Spoon
River was a fictional town.
And he created all the characters within it and wrote poetry from the point of view of
each character.
A man named Tom Andolora decided that this piece of Americana, which takes place at the
end of the 19th century would be enhanced by music, by songs of that era.
So he's transferred it into a genre we now call a play with music.
There's thirty five different characters played by eleven actors, costumed in the period itself
so at some point there's costumes to be built.
We don't have 19th century costumes in our stock and you can't get them off the rack
anywhere; they have to be built. So it's a challenge for our costume area.
For us a period piece is an opportunity to pick up the manners and the style, the look
of a different time.
And that challenge in of itself has been one of our biggest ones. When we chose plays here
we try very hard to, uh, reach a little farther and, uh, to challenge ourselves a little bit.
And this is the challenge to create a 19th century cemetery where we can sing and tell
the stories that the script asks us to tell.
The Spoon River Project is our winter show. Our winter show is usually our strongest,
um, time period, it gives us the most time to build, the most time to rehearse.
Our students are working really hard to meet those expectations.
We are also sending a few students in the next couple of weeks to the American College
Theatre Festival where they'll compete against students from other colleges in our region.
Part of what we do at PCC Theatre is to make things and we've been making them for twenty
five years and we've been working toward making them even better every year.
My name is Patrick Tangredi and I'm the theatre arts artistic director.