The Marriage of Bette and Boo
Date: Fri, June 20th 2008Additional Time Info: 8:00 p.m.
Event Tags: Live Theatre
Location: Mont.Coll. at TP Black Box Theatre
DURANG DERANGED
THE PLAY The Marriage of Bette and Boo by Christopher Durang runs June 5 – June 29 at Spooky Action Theater, in residence at The Black Box Theatre, Montgomery College, Takoma Park.
Durang mines his own memory à la Glass Menagerie – imagining, inventing, analyzing the history of his family and himself. Wicked and dazzling. Thirty years of divorce, alcoholism, madness and death in a wacky family world turned inside out. Wielding the sharp edge of farce, Durang strips an unlikely lode of irony and improbable laughter from the bone yard of his past.
THE PLAYWRIGHT The playwright sums himself up as follows, "Keywords: satire, dark comedy, parody, funny, absurdist. Other key words: winter, spring, fall. Also summer. More keywords: coffee, Yale School of Drama, zippers, age, lapsed Catholic, hiccups." Christopher Durang's plays, including Beyond Therapy, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, Baby with the Bathwater and Laughing Wild, have been produced on and off- Broadway, around the country and abroad. A graduate of Harvard and the Yale School of Drama, Durang is co-chair of the Playwriting Program at the Juilliard School in Manhattan.
THE PRODUCTION Director Perry T. Schwartz, Artistic Director of Montgomery College's Arts Alive program, returns to theater after several years focused on filmmaking in association with the American Film Institute. Designer Marie-Noelle Daigneault has created a set that echoes the irrationality and whimsy of the play. Jason Arnold's lighting designs have been seen at many local theatres, including Theatre J, Imagination Stage, Washington Shakespeare Company and Olney Theatre Center. The team includes costume designer Ellen Mansueto, sound designer Elisheba Ittoop, recipient of the 2008 USITT Rising Star Award, and video designer James Huckenpahler, whose scenic projections were integral to Spooky Action's Dark Rapture last fall.
THE CAST Katie Atkinson, Gerald B. Browning, William C. Cook, Joe Cronin, Mary C. Davis, Bill Gordon, Martha Karl, Ellen Mansueto, David Rothman and Mundy Spears
The Marriage of Bette and Boo is a co-production of Spooky Action Theater and Montgomery College Arts Alive