There may be something there that wasn't there before

The Fall 2009 Season for the TU Theatre Department has just been announced. Every semester, we typically put on two large Mainstage shows, and then undergraduate students in the department direct their own shows and graduate students stage their works, usually self-written. So ideally there are four or five shows running per semester.

The fall season is introducing a foreign influence. I know I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here, but my last entry mentioned England's excellence in the art and the Russian project I'm involved in. Well, fancy that. William Shakespeare's classic love story, Romeo and Juliet, will be staged here in the fall. Usually the department does put on historical plays of some sort, like last fall's The Crucible (set in Puritan Salem) and The Piano Lesson (set in 1930s Pittsburgh). Performing Shakespeare is something Towson hasn't embraced in several years and it will take this department one step further into our historical endeavors as we bring Elizabethan Italy to the stage.

The second Mainstage show will be the Russian play Tanya, Tanya, translated by American translator John Freedman (seen on the left) and directed by Russian guest director Yury Urnov, both of whom have been actively involved in TU theatre for some time now. The show is still being adapted for performance, but the department is excited to debut this work on Towson's stage.

Another new Russian play called The Polar Truth will be staged in the structure of a performance workshop by one of the department's graduate students.

These relations with Russian theatre artists has had remarkable impact in the past few weeks and it's already spread like wildfire into the department, and hopefully it will continue to delve further into crossing cultural boundaries in the future.

--DQ