Theatre department’s season featured in Illinois News Bureau

Original article written by Jodi Heckel and published by the Illinois News Bureau.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The theatre department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will offer views of healing and reconciliation in this season’s plays. The 2024-25 season includes a gothic melodrama, a Shakespeare production and a multigenerational story of an immigrant family.

“We look for the way the different works resonate with each other. One of the things that really comes to the fore when we have all these pieces together is transitions and healing and reconciliation,” said Valleri Robinson, the theatre department head. “There’s magic in each one of these pieces, and adventure, romance and love, even though they’re dealing with monstrosities of all kinds.”

A committee of faculty members and students made recommendations for the plays to be performed this season, and Robinson and Thom Miller, a professor of theatre studies and the producer of Illinois Theatre, made the final selections.

“We have to think about our academic and educational goals, first and foremost,” Robinson said. Students act, design and build sets, and work on all the technical aspects and stage management of the productions.

The department must consider venue availability and what venue is appropriate for a particular work. The Colwell Playhouse at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts is undergoing renovation work, so the theatre, Lyric Theatre and dance programs staged performances at the Virginia Theatre in downtown Champaign last year, and the Virginia will host the theatre department’s production of “Dracula, A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really” in November.

“We want to build excitement and enthusiasm and draw in the local community. Last year with ‘Rent’ at the Virginia, we saw so many young people and people from the community we might not have reached before,” Robinson said. “’Dracula’ was very successful at the Actors Theatre of Louisville. It’s timely, energetic, a joyful kind of send-up.”

Each play explores the passage of time, whether through memory, as in the season opener “No Puedo, I’m Sorry,” or over a period of 300 years in an adaptation of “Orlando.” The plays also feature powerful female characters who defy the limits imposed on them because of their gender to take control of their own lives, Robinson said.

“They are highlighting risk-takers, boundary-defiers, rule-breakers who are willing to go the extra mile to do what’s right,” she said.

Playwright Ariel Cipolla is producing “No Puedo, I’m Sorry” through the theatre department’s Daniel J. Sullivan Playwright-in-Residence program, which provides support for an emerging playwright to workshop a play and allows students to be part of developing a new work with a professional. Cipolla wrote “So You Think You Can Stay?,” which students directed at the Armory Free Theater last year. That led the department to ask him to participate in the Sullivan residency, Robinson said.

“’No Puedo, I’m Sorry’ is a beautiful love story with elements of heartache and cultural misunderstanding,” she said. It is performed Sept. 27-28 in KCPA’s Studio Theatre.

An adaptation of the Virginia Woolf novel “Orlando,” features a man who changes gender and over the course of 300 years learns what living within the constraints of being a woman is like. It is Nov. 1-2 and Nov. 6-9 in the Studio Theatre.

Robinson described the reimagining of “Dracula” as “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” meets Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” — both campy and dark, and filled with blood splatters. Women drive the storyline. It is performed Nov. 14-16 at the Virginia Theatre.

The Theatre Studies New Works Project is a program to help students develop new plays and apply the techniques they are learning in the classroom, with an emphasis on playwriting, devising and directing. The showcase of their works is free on Feb. 21-22 in the Studio Theatre.

“The Winter’s Tale” features a king whose jealousy leaves his family and kingdom in chaos. It is April 4-5 and April 9-12 in the Colwell Playhouse.

“Plumas Negras” uses magical realism to tell the story of three generations of Latina women in a farming community in California. Alongside the mothers and daughters are the specters of their ancestors who are part of the journey of these immigrants, Robinson said. The play is April 11-12 and April 16-19 in the Studio Theatre.

Tickets are available at krannertcenter.com.