Recent Stonehill Theatre Company (STC) Productions

Spring 2012

The Last Night of Ballyhoo by Alfred Uhry
Directed by Andrea Grapko

Set in 1939 Atlanta, the Tony Award winning, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, focuses on a Jewish-German family that is completely out of touch with what is happening back in Germany, where Nazism has consolidated its grip on the country. Adolph and Sunny Freitag and their family have assimilated into American life and find themselves adrift from their Jewish identity.

 

Fall 2011

Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov
Directed by Theresa Lang

Three Sisters is about the decay of the privileged class in Russia and the search for meaning in the modern world. The play describes the lives and aspirations of the Prozorov siblings. They are a family longing to return to the exciting, sophisticated Moscow, having become dissatisfied and frustrated with their provincial existence. As their dreams dissolve, they are obliged to seek meaning in the ordinariness of their everyday lives.

 

Spring 2011

Urinetown by Greg Kotis and Mark Hollman
Directed by Meg Dussault

Following a 20 year drought, the characters of the musical, Urinetown, are forced by the Urine Good Company (UGC) to "pay-to-pee." Those who cannot afford to pay the price for one of life's basic needs are sent to the penal colony "Urinetown". When a fee hike is enacted, a rebel worker leads a revolt against the UGC, demanding that people should be able to pee for free.

 

Fall 2010

Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen
Directed by Thomas Kee

Thomas Kee's adaptation relocates the story to a fictional town in modern day Massachusetts. Exploring questions relevant to audiences of today, the play focuses on the corrupting influence of populism on politicians and individuals.

After uncovering an environmental hazard that jeopardizes the town's prosperity, Dr. Stockmann reveals her discovery only to find she has incurred the wrath of a local populous frightened over the fate of their jobs. Facing political pressure from her brother the Mayor, financial stresses at home, and personal demands from all sides, she must decide whether to take a stand or give the people what they want: a cover-up.

 

Spring 2010

We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay! by Dario Fo
Directed by Theresa Lang

Dario Fo invites us into a world of desperation, and makes us laugh at it. His characters consummate clowns; their literal and metaphoric pratfalls let us laugh while making us question what we find so funny. His commitment to a social and political ideology was forged in the tumult of the 1960's and 1970's in Italy. The combination of political fervor and knock-about humor inspired outspoken and often violent suppression of the work in the political upheaval of the period. Hysterically complicated characters and scenarios make us questionthe abuse of authority, hunger, downsizing, and desperate people looking for answers--what could be funnier than that?

 

Fall 2009

Trojan Women: A Love Story
Directed by Dennis Trainor

Set in the modern world, the play is an exploding collage of Euripides' Trojan Women, contemporary music, The Aeneid, sentimental love songs, texts by the survivors of Hiroshima and of the Holocaust, the Kama Sutra, and the Geraldo show. It has been called a sexy history lesson and the funniest tragedy you've ever seen.

 

Fall 2008

Picnic by William Inge
Directed by Fran Weinberg

Picnic takes place in the small town of Independence, Kansas on Labor Day, when the waning days of summer should give way to the promise of a fresh autumn start. The options are few for those growing up there who yearn for a better life. When a dangerously handsome drifter rolls into town, his presence stirs up trouble and sets the whole town a-flutter. In this Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, Inge depicts the pleasure-and the pain-of risking everything to choose your own path.

 

Spring 2008

Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel
Directed by Stephen Benson

The story centers on five unmarried sisters living on a rugged farm outside a small town in Ireland in 1936. The sisters, different in temperament and talent, provide support for one another during hard times.

During one fateful summer, an uncle returns from twenty- five years spent as a missionary in Uganda and narrator Michael's absentee father returns to announce that he is on his way to Spain. The arrival of the men and their first wireless radio set the stage for a dramatic unleashing of unspoken emotions.

 

Fall 2007

Frankenstein Virtuoso by Louis J. Phillips
Directed by Douglas Coler

This farcical addendum to the Frankenstein legend is given a new twist by setting it in high-society London of the mid-20th century.

The monster has transformed into Victor Gottfried a handsome, wealthy scientist who is married to a beautiful woman.

The monster's creator, Victor Frankenstein, returns to reclaim his creation. Gottfried entertains the notion of abandoning his wife for a younger woman - Frankenstein's step-daughter. Will Gottfried finally exact revenge on his creator?

 

Spring 2007

Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim
Directed by J. Scott Brumit

This fractured fairytale delightfully intertwines a collection of well-known fables: Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Little Red Riding with an original story of a childless Baker and his Wife who desperately want a child.

The Baker and his Wife have been cursed with childlessness by a witch and must perform various missions involving the characters in the other fairy tales to break the spell. Once the characters have accomplished their goals, however, they learn about the pitfalls of greed and gluttony.

Finally, they learn about the need for community and family when they must unite to fight against the wife of the giant that Jack killed, who has decided to come back for revenge.

 

Fall 2006

Playhouse Creatures by April de Angelis
Directed by Patricia H. Sankus

Playhouse Creatures tells the story of a feisty group of women in the theatre world of Restoration London.

Set in 1663, the theatres have just been re-opened after seventeen years of suppression. Women are allowed to perform on stage for the first time in British history, giving them them opportunity for independence and equality.

At first received as promiscuous side shows, the women must overcome the challenges of their career as they struggle to gain their freedom and the respect of the public.

 

Spring 2006

Horrid Massacre in Boston by Don Nigro
Directed by Douglas Coler

This play tells the story of orphan Jane Lamb, who finds a home at Mrs. Turley's Bunch of Grapes Inn in Boston during the American Revolution.

The colorful, eccentric, and dangerous regulars she encounters there include a demonic roustabout who is a patriot, a traitor, or a bit of both; Ophelia, a mad girl who talks to mice; and the Oyster Man, a street vendor obsessed with the Boston Massacre where he received a wound that has scrambled his brains to an alarming degree.

Jane learns a vivid lesson about the dark underside of patriot mythology in this nightmarish world of murder, secrets, betrayal, and lunacy.

 

Fall 2005

Tales of the Lost Formicans by Constance Congdon
Directed by Victor Warren

This witty black comedy about contemporary American angst and yearning is part dream, part sci-fi farce in which extra-terrestrials observe and interpret suburban life through the lens of their own culture. They focus their study on a middle- American family struggling with problems that range from Alzheimer's disease and divorce to sexual frustration and the lack of communication between parents and children.

 

Spring 2005

Pippin by Stephen Schwartz
Directed by David Krinnit

This play incorporates a young prince's quest to discover the secret of true happiness and fulfillment with glories on the battlefield, temptations of the flesh, and the intrigues of political power. His ultimate discovery of true happiness rests in the simple pleasures of home, true love, and family.

 

Fall 2004

A Mouthful of Birds by Caryl Churchill and David Lan
Directed by Patricia H. Sankus

Freedom takes the form of possession in A Mouthful of Birds, based on Eurpides' The Bacchae, as seven contemporary characters undergo an "undefended day." Tumultuous, poignant, and absurd, each daring episode is an exploration of personal freedom from the norm. Discarding orthodoxy and inviting imagination through drama and dance, A Mouthful of Birds is representative of the madness of our postmodern world. Competed in ATCF & Received National Commendations

 

Spring 2004

Goodbye, My Fancy by Ivan Goff, Fay Kanin, and Ben Roberts Directed by David Krinnit

Liberal Congresswoman Agatha Reed returns to her alma mater after wartime experiences in Europe. To acquaint the young graduates with the horrors of war, she brings a harsh documentary. This creates a conflict with the school trustees, exposing the school president as a spineless figure, instead of the upstanding and outspoken professor with whom she thought she had been in love with for so many years.

 

Fall 2003

The Adding Machine by Elmer Rice

Are we just part of a machine forever locked into predetermined roles we must play? This question was explored by Elmer Rice in The Adding Machine.

Written before the darn of electronic computers, CDs and cell- phones, this expressionistic classic presents a frightening view of society's future. This story is dramatized through the eyes of Mr. Zero, a man who works the same job for twenty-five years, only to be replaced by a machine. His struggle to cope with the intimidating force of technology is the struggle of each of us.

 

Spring 2003

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum by Stephen Sondheim

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum draws most of its farcical situations directly from the plays of Titus Maccius Plautus (254 BC-184 BC), ancient Rome's best-known comic playwright.

The plot revolves around Pseudolus, a slave who will do almost anything to gain his freedom. When Pseudolus is left in charge of his owner's young son who has fallen madly in love with a beautiful courtesan, the fun begins.

The young boy promises Pseudolus his freedom if he can arrange a marriage before his father returns. Pseudolus, of course, agrees. But not even the conniving slave can foresee the tangled web that he is about to weave.

 

Fall 2002

An Experiment with an Air Pump by Shelagh Stephenson Directed by Patricia H. Sankus

The Scientific and Romantic attitudes of 1799 are contrasted and counterpointed by their 1999 equivalents in this drama of love, mystery and betrayal. In Act I, the Fenwick family questions the basic principles of medical research, including the right to perform dissection on the recently deceased. In Act II, a modern family debates the use of embryos in stem-cell research. Both families address the issue of traditional gender roles and question the stereotypes of women scientists during the 200 year span.

 

Spring 2002

Wall of Water by Sherry Kramer

This fast-paced farce is a jewel in the comic world. The classic humor on mistaken identity mixed with many new-aged twists leaves the audience wanting for more.

Wall of Water is not simply a bunch of funny one-liners and slapstick; it is an intractably woven tale that tackles subjects as serious as death and as important as scientific inquiry, and everything in between.

Wall of Water offers a delightful cast of characters, from the mentally unstable Wendy to the serious and studious Stuart who all take on the world in their own, unique way, on this one day out of their lives- the one day when everything goes wrong!

 

Fall 2001

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

This play is best described in the word's of it's author Ray Bradbury: "I took a look at the green apple trees and the old house I was born in and the house next door where my grandparents lived and all the lawns of summers I grew up in.

Dandelion Wine is nothing if it is not the boy-hid-in-the-man playing in the fields of the Lord in the midst of starting to grow up, grow old, and sense the darkness waiting under the trees to seed the blood. What you have here then is a gathering of dandelions from all those years." Competed in ATCF

 

Spring 2001

Ubu by Jeff Goode

This grotesque farce about the monstrous Ubu, originally written as a parody of one of Jarry's teachers, swiftly turned into a satire of society as a whole.

The title character, Pere Ubu, is a gluttonous, greedy, cruel and incompetent individual who, with the help of his cunning wife, slaughters the royal family of Poland in order to ascend the throne.

The play's scatological references, ridiculous style, and bastardized language caused the audience to riot when it was first produced. The Surrealists and Dadaists later championed it in the 1920's recognizing in Ubu Roi the first Absurdist drama.

 

Fall 2000

Wild Oats by John O'Keefe

Based on a comedy by John O'Keefe, Wild Oats is set in the saloons and prairies of the Old West and tells a convoluted story of mistaken identities, long-lost children, evil landlords, farm foreclosures, dashing cavalrymen, a lustful preacher and a hero who can stop a train with one hand.

 

Spring 2000

Gint by Romulus Linney

A loose adaptation of Ibsen's Peer Gynt, Gint unfolds like a strange dream, telling the story of Pete Gint, a ragged young man in the Appalachian Mountains in 1917. After a troubled youth, Gint is determined to become "something great, grand, and glorious," At age 75 he succeeds in becoming a billionaire, and ruthlessly pursues a dream of founding a new country based solely on corporations. Ultimately cast out by others more controlling than he, Gint returns to the wilderness, beginning a nightmarish journey home.