When Adam, a quiet,
awkward college student, meets Evelyn, a beautiful and interesting
art graduate student,
his world is changed forever in shocking ways. |
| astonish
\?-‘sta¯-nish\ transitive verb
Etymology:…from Anglo-French estoner to stun, from Vulgar
Latin *extonare, from Latin ex-+ tonare to thunder…
To set the teeth on edge.
To stun mentally; to shock one out of his wits; to drive stupid,
bewilder.
To shock one out of his self-possession, or confidence; to dismay,
terrify.
To give a shock of wonder by the presentation of something unlooked
for or unaccountable; to amaze, surprise greatly.
(Etymology from Merriam Webster Online, Definitions from OED Online)
Our fall productions have explored
over a century of coming of age stories. In all three plays we
find strong, capable, astonishing women who are struggling to
be heard. Each of these women make choices that shock us with
fear or wonder because they defy the mores of their times. The
struggle to become is more important than social affirmation.
Little Women looks at the changing roles of women during/after
the civil war and is a prominent early feminist work whose inspiration
shepherded us from the 19th to the 20th century. Jimmy Dean’s
characters come of age during the golden era of the 1950’s,
a generation consumed with the illusions of the American Dream
as portrayed on the big screen. The Shape of Things,
first published in 1991 and republished again in 2003, brings
us to today’s post modern generation whose coming of age
dawned not only on the new century but on a new millennium.
In Little Women, Jo’s focus is on her future and
in Jimmy Dean, Mona is stuck in the glory days of her
past, but the characters in Shape are planted firmly
in the present, dealing with the overwhelming influence of the
media on our perception of who we can or cannot become.
It might be easy to look at Little Women and Jimmy
Dean with eyes clouded by nostalgia and forget that the actions
of these women were surprising and full of wonder - but at the
time they were defying social gravity, so to speak. Because it
is current and the issues are close to us, The Shape of Things
asks us to take a good hard look at ourselves and the waters in
which we navigate our lives today. Like Evelyn, we hope that “perhaps
[we] can make you question [the] system and your values just a
little bit.”
“Well, if she asked
you to jump off a bridge, would you?”
- my mother, your mother, all mothers everywhere
--Lori Bales, Director
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