Last modified: Monday, June 22, 2009
IU's Brown County Playhouse presents 'There Goes the Bride'
WHAT:
There Goes the Bride
WHEN: Opens Friday, July 10, at 8 p.m. Additional performances take place July 11, 15-18, 22-25, 29-Aug. 1 at 8 p.m., and 12,19, 25-26 and Aug. 1-2 at 3 p.m.
WHERE: All performances take place at the Brown County Playhouse, 70 S. Van Buren, Nashville, Ind.
TICKETS: $20 regular admission and $12 for children and students. Flex Vouchers, four ticket vouchers for the price of 3: $48-$60. For ticket information, group rates, or to order flex vouchers call the IU Auditorium at 812-855-1103 or Brown County Playhouse at 812-988-2123, or get details and buy online at www.theatre.indiana.edu. Note: No video or photography permitted during performances.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 22, 2009
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Summer is the season for weddings, and Indiana University's Brown County Playhouse opens its second show of the season with the perfectly themed There Goes the Bride, a matrimonial comedy written by Ray Cooney and John Chapman that brings new meaning to the phrase "trouble in paradise."
IU Professor of Theatre and Drama Bruce Burgun directs Bride, which features both professional actors and students from IU's highly regarded Department of Theatre and Drama. Broadway and television veteran Kurt Zischke joins the cast in the role of Charles Babcock.
Timothy Westerby, played by IU Theatre and Drama graduate student Matthew Buffalo, is surprised by his dream girl, Polly Perkins, played by undergraduate Theatre and Drama student Mandy Striph in "There Goes the Bride" at the Brown County Playhouse.
"Farce is a very challenging form of acting that takes a highly skilled team of players," said Burgun. "Farce demands comic ingenuity, superb precision and expert timing. It is highly physical, energetic and explosive. It runs at a fever pitch, but the actors must be absolutely in the moment, impulsive and living in the circumstances -- no matter how crazy they may be."
Planning a wedding often creates tension, but the society event in There Goes the Bride goes a little further. Besides the usual interfering relatives and disapproving future in-laws, bride-to-be Judy (IU Theatre and Drama student Sarah Fischer, in her playhouse debut) must deal with a father (harassed advertising executive Timothy Westerby, played by Matthew Buffalo) who is losing his mind -- and not because he's losing a daughter.
The morning of the wedding, Judy's dad hits his head and happily awakens beside Polly Perkins (IU Theatre and Drama student Mandy Striph, currently performing in The All Night Strut!) a 1920's Flapper girl straight out of his latest promotional campaign. The only problem? No one else can see or hear her.
Imagining himself back in 1926, Timothy falls in love with the figment of his imagination as the current wedding preparations plummet into pandemonium and desperate friends and family do their utmost to get the father of the bride back to reality in time to walk his daughter down the aisle.
Burgun, a veteran director of Ray Cooney farces at the Brown County Playhouse, heads a creative team that includes award-winning scenic designer Fred Duer, costume designer Erica Greise, lighting designer Ryan Davies and sound designer Mary Weber.
The cast includes Theatre and Drama faculty member and professional actor Nancy Lipschultz as Daphne. Mike Price and Ken Farrell, both of whom have performed for the Cardinal Stage Company and other regional theater companies, make their debut performances at the playhouse. Fischer as Judy and Abby Rowold as Ursula also make their playhouse debuts (both performed during the Lee Norvelle Theatre and Drama Center 2008-09 season).
Zischke, a veteran of Broadway, off-Broadway and regional theater brings a breadth of professional acting experience, ranging from working with celebrated acting mentor Sanford Meisner to Broadway musicals, to just about every major drama in the English speaking canon like Feste in Twelfth Night and Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, to both television daytime and prime time dramas like "All My Children" and "Law and Order: Criminal Intent."
"It's a true privilege to have a talent like Kurt Zischke among our students and other professionals onstage for There Goes the Bride," said John Edward Kinzer, director of audience development for IU's Department of Theatre and Drama. "This is sure to be a terrific production."
Director Burgun said that while some people call farce "inspired nonsense" that "isn't really about anything," he disagrees. "I think, on a very important level, farce is about something. Like all comedy, farce is a celebration, a holiday from reason. It celebrates human resourcefulness -- our capacity to be spontaneously inventive no matter how immediate or disastrous the crisis."
For more information about the IU Department of Theatre and Drama, see https://www.indiana.edu/~thtr/. For more information about the Brown County Playhouse, see https://www.indiana.edu/~thtr/bcplay.html.
