SBU Theater to Offer Up One-Act Wonders

Theater students and faculty members are gearing up for a biennial rite of spring on the St. Bonaventure University campus – the presentation of four one-act plays in a production that repeats itself over four nights.

“Reality Bites: One Act Festival V” will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, March 24-27, at the University’s Garret Theater adjacent to Devereux Hall. There will be an audience talk-back session after the performance on Friday, March 26, during which the cast, crew, designer and director will discuss the production and take questions from the audience.

Performed will be works by Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, both Nobel Prize winners; David Ives, a noted Broadway and Off-Broadway writer whose one-act plays have been popular with SBU Theater audiences; and Lawrence G. Smith, an Artie Award-nominated playwright who has had several works performed regionally, including one that’s playing at Buffalo’s Alleyway Theater.

Audiences will be taken on a journey through the strange and unusual, from being trapped in a manipulative desert to watching a noted historical figure reliving his own demise over and over, said Dr. Ed. Simone, chairman of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts and head of the SBU Theater program. The evening includes Pinter’s hard-hitting examination of state-sanctioned torture, an exploration of loneliness, as well as silent pieces for two moving bodies in the style of Japanese Buto.

The production “is meant to amplify SBU’s commitment to nonviolence and social justice and to look at how we realize our lives in time and space,” said Simone. “The four plays and the movement pieces are reflections of different aspects of an awareness of the human condition as it is and as it might be. There’s comedy, but there’s some very powerful argument made in these pieces as well.”

The production contains adult language and subject matter and is meant for mature audiences, he cautioned.

Rebecca Misenheimer, assistant professor of theater at St. Bonaventure, is the production’s designer and technical director.

The cast includes SBU theater majors Ryan Kasperski, Emily West, Karim Troncelliti, Liz Mohun, Lizzy Vivino and Ashley Waterman, theater minor Clint Lienau, as well as these SBU students from other disciplines: Cameron DeOrdio, James Torres, Mike Dlugosz, Sean O’Shea and Katie Desautels. Also performing is 11-year-old Tyler Richmond from the Olean Theatre Workshop.

The show will also feature live, original music performed by Olean composer and percussionist Moses Mark Howden, an adjunct music instructor at SBU, and members of the University’s percussion ensemble.

The stage manager is Monica Edwards and assistant stage managers are Catherine Turner and theater minor Corrie Damulis. Student technicians include theater majors Erin Lowry, Chris Britten and Paul Finley, as well as these students from other disciplines: Hannah Coon, Katie Reusch, Mary Harner, Tawanna Jones-Smith, Mallory Diefenbach, Tanisha Gamble, Christiana Eckel, Justin Carter, Carolynn Harrington, Sarah Schweiger and Leanna Chojnacki.

Seating in the intimate Garret Theater is limited and performances of previous SBU Theater productions have been sold out. To reserve a seat for “Reality Bites: One Act Festival V,” call the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts box office (716) 375-2494. Any unsold tickets will be available as free “student rush” seats beginning at 6:30 p.m. the night of each performance. Students must show their ID.

Pictured, Clint Lienau (left) and Ashley Waterman