PHOTO COURTESY UIS THEATER DEPARTMENT
Left to proper: Dakota Kitson (Pam), Hannah Curran (Carol) and Arai Woods (Renee) in a scene the place Pam and Renee consolation Carol.
Hurricane Diane opens like an historic Greek stage play. The perpetual character Diane comes out from the viewers entrance in a gold robe and a leaf-made diadem on her head. She walks into the round stage that sits earlier than a barely lit setting that resembles a suburban kitchen. What begins as a comedic monologue shortly turns into an indignant rant directed on the viewers.
Within the award-winning 2017 play, the Greek demigod of agriculture, Dionysus, takes the type of a permaculture gardener named Diane for a cul-de-sac of 4 ladies in a New Jersey suburban neighborhood within the hopes of buying new followers and ending the climate-change apocalypse.
The manufacturing is being carried out at College of Illinois Springfield for 2 weekends. I attended Nov. 2, and it was a good time. The present carried a severe message, poignant at the moment greater than ever, by way of a humorous script and highly effective performances.
Diane, performed by UIS staffer Amanda Lazzara, is dynamic, switching shortly from a joyous and seductive attention-seeking god to an indignant and spiteful god. Carol, the resistant company housewife performed by Hannah Curran, referred to as her “your typical Karen,” who talks like she’ll die if she says what she desires to say. Beth, performed by UIS pupil Pleasure Brown, is a quiet, nervous lady who Brown described as “repressive,” however who quickly tries to seek out herself after her husband left her. Aria Woods, a UIS pupil who performed Renee, an editor for HGTV journal who Woods described as “strong-willed” and “enthusiastic about what she does.” Lastly there may be Pam, performed by UIS pupil Dakota Kitson, who Kitson described as “my Italian aunt from New Jersey who drinks an excessive amount of wine and yells while you break a spaghetti in half.”
The director of the manufacturing, Missy Thibodeaux-Thompson, a UIS college member since 2006, spent the spring on the lookout for the autumn play along with her coworkers Dathan Powell and Eric Thibodeaux-Thompson. Not till she went to a theater convention in Connecticut did she see a manufacturing of Hurricane Diane and was fully amazed.
Thibodeaux-Thompson additionally stated that the play is an avenue not just for leisure however for engagement.
“For the potential of social change, the potential to make our viewers cease and suppose, ‘Oh, what are we doing to this planet?’,” Thibodeaux-Thompson stated. ” …I would like folks to go away with the concept of listening to 1 one other, of listening to one another, listening to what the planet is telling us.”
The director then pointed to the hurricanes that devastated the South a month in the past as an indication that we should make modifications in our personal lives.
“Two names I’m going to say, Helene and Milton, that simply occurred prior to now month,” Thibodeaux-Thompson stated. “These hurricanes, that is the Earth attempting to inform us one thing. What are we going to do about it, what can we do about it? And the play tells us that we as human beings do not must do every little thing, we do not have to make ginormous, big modifications. Generally it may be small issues and if sufficient of us try this small factor, then possibly that may assist.”
With local weather change and sustainability being so essential to the play, Thibodeaux-Thompson employed UIS biology professor and ecologist Dr. Amy McEuen because the dramaturg. She would spend months researching Greek mythology, botany and sustainability.
“Even when it appears small, we do not all must do the identical issues,” McEuen stated “All of us have completely different talent units, all of us have various things we take pleasure in doing. So, it is about attempting to determine what’s your piece of fixing the local weather disaster and the way we will come collectively as a neighborhood and hopefully not be too overwhelming in fixing these issues.”
The impact of local weather change affected the forged and the way some portrayed their position.
“As we have been within the midst of rehearsals, we had the hurricanes. That opened my eyes and I began doing extra analysis. That was capable of feed into the panic as my character,” Kitson stated.
Lazzara has been a vegan for a decade, partly on account of the impact meat manufacturing has on local weather.
“We’re just one individual however after we join with all different single folks, who suppose and act the identical method we do, we will truly impact change,” Lazzara stated.
The present continues Nov. 7 to Nov. 9, beginning at 7:30 pm. You should buy tickets on the UIS ticket workplace on the primary flooring of UIS Performing Arts Heart or name 217-206-6160 to be taught extra.
Cesar Toscano graduated from Columbia Chicago with a B.A. in inventive writing and located love for journalism throughout his final 12 months of school modifying for the Columbia Chronicle. He’s at the moment finding out within the Public Affairs Reporting program at College of Illinois Springfield.
