Friday, November 9, through Sunday, November 18
Scott Community College's Black Box Theatre, Room #228 through Door #2, 500 Belmont Road, Bettendorf IA
From November 9 through 18, a quintet of works by one of America's most acclaimed and prolific writers serves as the opening presentation in Scott Community College's 2018-19 theatre season, with Lives of the Saints: Five One-Acts treating audiences to the witty, silly, and hilarious words and actions of author David Ives, the Tony-nominated author of Venus in Fur whom the New York Times called a “maestro of the short form.”
With the college's production boasting students serving in the roles of director (Julian Totton), assistant director (Brandon Reinders), and costume designer (Eric Schumachr), more than a dozen additional SCC students play an assortment of eccentric and memorable figures in five of Ives' most beguiling short plays. In The Goodness of Your Heart, Antonio Collins and Sabin Paudel portray Del and Marsh, close pals whose friendship is put to the test over the 900 dollars (and change) required to purchase a 4-D surround-sound television. Enigma Variations involves Chloe Haertjens, Aria Jensen, Lee Malm, Joseph Rangel, and Marcelus Willis in zany hijinks as a pair of lookalikes named Bebe W.W. Doppel-gängler solve an identity crisis with the help of a doctor and his nurse, the latter of whom may or may not be the goddess of love Aphrodite.
Another acting quintet – with Enigma Variations' Haertjens, Jensen, and Malm joined by Ethan Mason and director Totten – takes on The Mystery at Twickham Vicarage, in which ridiculous Masterpiece Theatre-style suspects and a bumbling Scotland Yard detective solve philosophical quandaries as they attempt to find the killer of one Jeremy Thumpington-Fffienes. The End of Travel casts Aria Jensen and Makis Witt in Ives' tale of a woman looking to take the vacation of a lifetime and realizing that her destination might be beyond what she imagined. And in the titular one-act Lives of the Saints, Gabrielle Graham-LeGare and Madison Danielson portray Edna and Flo, characters who, in their church basement, muse on life, death, and the meaning of Polish jokes while preparing a funeral breakfast.
Lives of the Saints: Five One-Acts runs November 9 through 18 with performances at 7:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. on Sundays. Admission is $8, with reservations strongly recommended, and more information and tickets are available by calling (563)441-4339 or e-mailing theatre instructor Kevin Babbitt at KDBabbitt@eicc.edu.
