Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Canterbury Tales, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1972-1973 Season

Canterbury Tales is a musical originally presented at the Oxford Playhouse in 1964, conceived and directed by Martin Starkie and written by Nevill Coghill and Martin Starkie. There are two versions of this musical (Canterbury Tales and More Canterbury Tales), each making up about half the story.

The musical took five tales from the Canterbury Tales and told them with song and humour. These were; The Miller's Tale; The Nun's Priest's Tale; The Steward's Tale; The Merchant's Tale; and The Wife of Bath's Tale. In addition, Chaucer's Prologue and Epilogue were spoken. The purpose behind these stories was that Harry …

The Lion In Winter, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1972-1973 Season

Betrayal, treachery, and a knife fight: it’s just another normal Christmas celebration for the royal Plantagenet family of Britain. In The Lion in Winter, King Henry II throws a Christmas feast for the newly crowned King of France. Also in attendance for the holiday celebrations are Henry’s three plotting sons, each eager to take the throne, and Henry’s manipulative wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, newly released from house arrest. The Lion in Winter is a play that transcends the historical genre to become a bitingly hilarious family drama.

http://stageagent.com/shows/play/4865/the-lion-in-winter#ixzz4uU6UZnwd

Much Ado About Nothing, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1972-1973 Season

Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy by William Shakespeare thought to have been written in 1598 and 1599, as Shakespeare was approaching the middle of his career. The play was included in the First Folio, published in 1623.

By means of "noting" (which, in Shakespeare's day, sounded similar to "nothing" as in the play's title, and which means gossip, rumour, and overhearing), Benedick and Beatrice are tricked into confessing their love for each other, and Claudio is tricked into rejecting Hero at the altar on the erroneous belief that she has been unfaithful. At the end, Benedick and Beatrice …

Alice In Wonderland, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1972-1973 Season

Alice and her sister Delilah are sitting under a tree when Alice sees the White Rabbit hurry down a rabbit hole. Alice follows the White Rabbit into Wonderland, where she has a series of marvelously imaginative adventures.

https://www.enotes.com/topics/alices-adventures

The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1972-1973 Season

“Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.” So speaks Jean Brodie, a liberated and charismatic schoolteacher. Edinburgh in the 1930s is conservative and respectable, but at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls, Miss Brodie stands out among the drab faculty, with her passionate teaching style.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a gripping, entertaining, powerful drama of adolescence and adulthood, of betrayal and manipulation, and the powerful, lasting effect of a charismatic teacher.

http://stageagent.com/shows/play/2047/the-prime-of-miss-jean-brodie#ixzz4uU7r21X1

Fiddler On The Roof, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1971-1972 Season

Fiddler on the Roof is a musical with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein, set in the Pale of Settlement of Imperial Russia in 1905. It is based on Tevye and his Daughters (or Tevye the Dairyman) and other tales by Sholem Aleichem. The story centers on Tevye, the father of five daughters, and his attempts to maintain his Jewish religious and cultural traditions as outside influences encroach upon the family's lives. He must cope both with the strong-willed actions of his three older daughters, who wish to marry for love – each …

School For Scandal, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1971-1972 Season

The middle-aged and wealthy bachelor, Sir Peter Teazle, has married the young and comely daughter of a country squire. The fashionable society of which Lady Teazle through through her marriage becomes a part, occupies itself mainly with malicious gossip whose arrows no one, however chaste, can completely escape. By far the most dangerous of these backbiting cliques is the one led by Lady Sneerwell

http://www.theatrehistory.com/british/sheridan002.html.

Romeo And Juliet, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1971-1972 Season

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately reconcile their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and along with Hamlet, is one of his most frequently performed plays. Today, the title characters are regarded as archetypal young lovers.

Romeo and Juliet belongs to a tradition of tragic romances stretching back to antiquity. The plot is based on an Italian tale translated into verse as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke in 1562 and retold in prose …

Cinderella, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1971-1972 Season

Cinderella or The Little Glass Slipper, is a folk tale embodying a myth-element of unjust oppression/triumphant reward. Thousands of variants are known throughout the world. The title character is a young woman living in unfortunate circumstances, that are suddenly changed to remarkable fortune. The story of Rhodopis, recounted by the Greek geographer Strabo in around 7 BC, about a Greek slave girl who marries the king of Egypt, is usually considered as the earliest known variant of the "Cinderella" story. The first literary European version of the story was published in Italy by Giambattista Basile in his Pentamerone in 1634; …

Life With Father, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1971-1972 Season

Life With Father is a 1939 play by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, adapted from a humorous autobiographical book of stories compiled in 1935 by Clarence Day. Clarence Day wrote humorously about his family and life. The stories of his father, Clarence "Clare" Day, Senior, were first printed in the New Yorker magazine. They portray a rambunctious, overburdened Wall Street broker who demands that everything from his family should be just so. The more he rails against his staff, his cook, his wife, his horse, salesmen, holidays, his children and the inability of the world to live up to his …

The World Of Carl Sandburg, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1969-1970 Season

The World of Carl Sandburg brings to the stage selections from ten of Sandburg's major works, including The People, Yes, Always the Young Strangers and The American Songbag. They show the basic uncluttered, incessantly hopeful lifeblood that was and is the foundation of our country. Through the media of speech, music, dance and stage actions, we present characters, emotions and memories that have made Sandburg a founding father in American poetry. We bring you no set time, no set people, no set age--only the ever-applicable Sandburg.

-Teri Hiatt

The Happy Time, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1968 Summer Theatre

Young Robert "Bibi" Bonnard grows up in Ottawa, Ontario with his parents, Jacques and Susan , and his roving rogue of a grandfather, Grandpere. Across the street is his uncle, amiable drunkard Louis, who ignores the complaints of his hard-working dressmaker wife Felice and her worries about the future of their daughter Yvonne. Louis agitates about meeting his prospective son-in-law, Alfred Grattin, a teetotaler bank clerk who wishes to marry Yvonne. Next-door neighbour and schoolmate Peggy O'Hare (Marlene Cameron) has a crush on Bibi, but he is as yet too young to understand.

The Happy Time. (2017, March 5). In …

Antigone, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1968 Summer Theatre

Jean Anouilh's play Antigone is a tragedy inspired by Greek mythology and the play of the same name (Antigone, by Sophocles) from the fifth century B.C. In English, it is often distinguished from its antecedent by being pronounced similarly to its original French form [ɑ̃tiɡɔn], approximately on-tee-GONE.

The play was first performed in Paris at the Théâtre de l'Atelier on February 6, 1944, during the Nazi occupation. Produced under Nazi censorship, the play is purposefully ambiguous with regard to the rejection of authority (represented by Antigone) and the acceptance of it (represented by Creon). The parallels to …

Barefoot In The Park, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1968 Summer Theatre

Barefoot in the Park is a romantic comedy by Neil Simon. The play premiered on Broadway in 1963 and starred Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley. The play was made into a film in 1967, also starring Redford, and Jane Fonda.

Corie and Paul Bratter are a newlywed couple. For their first home, they live in an apartment on the top floor of a brownstone in New York City. During the course of four days, the couple learns to live together while facing the usual daily ups-and-downs. Corrie wants Paul to become more easy-going: for example, to run "barefoot in the …

Once Upon A Mattress, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1968 Summer Theatre

Due to an unhappy curse, King Sextimus is unable to speak. Meanwhile, his terror-of-a-wife, Queen Aggravain, has taken over control of the kingdom. Most importantly, in an attempt to keep Prince Dauntless single, she has decreed that only the princess that can pass her test may marry her son. Further, no one else in the kingdom may marry until Prince Dauntless does. Lady Larken and Sir Harry are extremely disturbed by this fact since Lady Larken is now pregnant with Sir Harry's baby. Luckily, Sir Harry is able to find an amazing princess, Winnifred the Woebegone. She instantly catches the …

Carousel, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1967-1968 Season

The story revolves around carousel barker Billy Bigelow, whose romance with millworker Julie Jordan comes at the price of both their jobs. He attempts a robbery to provide for Julie and their unborn child; after it goes wrong, he is given a chance to make things right. A secondary plot line deals with millworker Carrie Pipperidge and her romance with ambitious fisherman Enoch Snow. The show includes the well-known songs "If I Loved You", "June Is Bustin' Out All Over" and "You'll Never Walk Alone".

The Crucible, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1967-1968 Season

The Crucible is a 1953 play by American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692/93. Miller wrote the play as an allegory for McCarthyism, when the United States government ostracized people for being communists. Miller himself was questioned by the House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956 and convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to identify others present at meetings he had attended.

The play was first performed at the Martin Beck Theatre on Broadway on January 22, …

The Wizard Of Oz, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1967-1968 Season

No abstract provided.

Waiting For Godot, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1967-1968 Season

It has been said Waiting for Godot, with destructive intent, that it is a drama in which absolutely nothing happens. "And does that seem a small accomplishment?" we should ask. This is precisely what is so fascinating about Waiting for Godot: that nothing happens. It is a lucid testimony of nothingness. But while we are left cold by many dramas of intrigue in which a great deal happens, this "nothing happens" of Waiting for Godot keeps us in suspense. These men who are bored cast us out of our own boredom; their boredom produces our catharsis, and we …

The Merchant Of Venice, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1967-1968 Season

The Merchant of Venice is a 16th-century play by William Shakespeare in which a merchant in Venice must default on a large loan provided by an abused (Jewish) moneylender. It is believed to have been written between 1596 and 1599. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic scenes, and it is best known for Shylock and the famous "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech. Also notable is Portia's speech about "the quality of mercy".

The Merchant of Venice. (2017, June …

The Philadelphia Story, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1967 Summer Theatre

The Philadelphia Story is a 1939 American comic play by Philip Barry. It tells the story of a socialite whose wedding plans are complicated by the simultaneous arrival of her ex-husband and an attractive journalist.

Take Her, She's Mine, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1967 Summer Theatre

A father is overprotective toward his teenage daughter as she leaves home to go to college and study abroad in Paris.

Take Her, She's Mine. (2017, June 4). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:05, June 14, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Take_Her,_She%27s_Mine&oldid=783721960

The Dark At The Top Of The Stairs, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1967 Summer Theatre

The Dark at the Top of the Stairs is a 1957 play by William Inge about family conflicts during the early 1920s in a small Oklahoma town. It was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play in 1958 and was made into a film of the same name in 1960.

The drama centers on Rubin Flood, who loses his salesman job. While searching for a new job, he must deal with his wife, Cora, who shuns intimacy and mistakes his joblessness for stinginess, his shy daughter who prepares for her first dance and his pre-teen son who runs to …

Rhinoceros, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1967 Summer Theatre

Rhinoceros (French original title Rhinocéros) is a play by Eugène Ionesco, written in 1959. The play was included in Martin Esslin's study of post-war avant garde drama, "The Theatre of the Absurd", although scholars have also rejected this label as too interpretatively narrow. Over the course of three acts, the inhabitants of a small, provincial French town turn into rhinoceroses; ultimately the only human who does not succumb to this mass metamorphosis is the central character, Bérenger, a flustered everyman figure who is initially criticized in the play for his drinking, tardiness, and slovenly lifestyle and then, later, for …

The Fantasticks, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1967 Summer Theatre

The Fantasticks is a 1960 musical with music by Harvey Schmidt and lyrics by Tom Jones. It tells an allegorical story, loosely based on the play The Romancers (Les Romanesques) by Edmond Rostand, concerning two neighboring fathers who trick their children, Luisa and Matt, into falling in love by pretending to feud. The fathers hire traveling actors to stage a mock abduction, so that Matt can heroically seem to save Luisa, ending the supposed feud. When the children discover the deception, they reject the arranged love match and separate. Each then gains disillusioning experiences of the real world, …

Brigadoon, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1966-1967 Season

Brigadoon is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, and music by Frederick Loewe. Songs from the musical, such as "Almost Like Being in Love", have become standards. The story involves two American tourists who stumble upon Brigadoon, a mysterious Scottish village that appears for only one day every 100 years. Tommy, one of the tourists, falls in love with Fiona, a young woman from Brigadoon.

The original production opened on Broadway in 1947 and ran for 581 performances. It starred David Brooks, Marion Bell, Pamela Britton, and Lee Sullivan. In 1949, Brigadoon opened at the …

Our Town, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1966-1967 Season

Our Town is a 1938 metatheatrical three-act play by American playwright Thornton Wilder. It tells the story of the fictional American small town of Grover's Corners between 1901 and 1913 through the everyday lives of its citizens.

Throughout, Wilder uses metatheatrical devices, setting the play in the actual theatre where it is being performed. The main character is the stage manager of the theatre who directly addresses the audience, brings in guest lecturers, fields questions from the audience, and fills in playing some of the roles. The play is performed without a set on a mostly bare stage. With a …

Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1966-1967 Season

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a Broadway play that debuted at the Little Theatre on West 44th Street, New York City, on October 31, 1912. Based on the stories by the Brothers Grimm, it was produced by Winthrop Ames who had written it under the pseudonym "Jessie Braham White." The play met with favorable reviews and became the basis for the 1916 film, Snow White.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1912 play). (2016, August 31). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:38, June 12, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Snow_White_and_the_Seven_Dwarfs_(1912_play)&oldid=737081172

Brecht On Brecht, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1966-1967 Season

Brecht on Brecht is not a play; it is more a portrait of Bertolt Brecht, made up from selected writings by the playwright-poet. In 1963, George Tabori assembled poems and selections from plays and arranged them in a thematic order to resemble Brecht's own life experiences. This was essentially the script for Brecht on Brecht.

As You Like It, Otterbein University Theatre And Dance Department

1966-1967 Season

As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 and first published in the First Folio, 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility.

As You Like It follows its heroine Rosalind as she flees persecution in her uncle's court, accompanied by her cousin Celia to find safety and, eventually, love, in the Forest of Arden. In the forest, they encounter a variety of memorable characters, notably the melancholy traveller Jaques who speaks many of Shakespeare's most …