Metro Pulse/Backstage

Comment
on this story

What:
The Kentucky Cycle

When:
8 p.m. Oct. 10, 11, 17 & 18, 2 p.m. Oct. 12.

Where:
Pellissippi State's Hardin Valley Campus, Performing Arts Center

Cost:
$10 adults, $8 students & seniors.

What:
Buried Child

When:
Oct. 10-25.

Where:
Clarence Brown Theatre

Cost:
$22 ($35 opening night). Discounts for UT faculty/staff, seniors, children & students. Call 974-5161 for tickets.

What:
The Hobbit

When:
Oct. 11-26, 2 and 7 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays

Where:
Black Box Theatre

Cost:
$5. Call 909-9300 for tickets.

Two Pulitzers and one fantasy classic make a busy month

by Paige M. Travis

Can there be too much of a good thing? The local theater scene challenges us to answer that question this month by opening three major productions this weekend. Read on and figure out which shows will tempt you to forget your own life and enter the worlds of feuding families, secretive Midwesterners and adventurous Hobbits.

The Kentucky Cycle by Robert Schenkkan got Charles Miller's attention and wouldn't let it go. "It's one of the only plays I've picked up in the past 10 years that once I started reading, I couldn't put it down," he says. Now he's directing the play at Pellissippi State's Performing Arts Center.

The play, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 and the Best Play Tony in 1994, is a series of nine acts, the action spanning 200 years and taking over six hours to perform. Miller's cast will perform only the first half, from 1775 to 1861. Either way, it's a seriously epic production.

"It's a play with a lot of very high drama, the highest conflict you can get," Miller says. The story follows three families—Rowen, Talbert and Biggs—and the conflicts they encounter with each other in an American with growing pains. The play is Greek in its scope, Miller says, complete with curses, revenge, tragedy, loss and physical violence of the guns, knives and fists variety. "It's very intense," he says.

The Kentucky Cycle might not make us feel very uplifted about our country's roots, but it's a unique piece of theater.

"It's going to be different from anything people have seen," says Miller. "It's a terrific piece of literature."

Miller is so convinced of the play's worth, he's entered the production in the Kennedy Center's American College Theater Festival. He thinks the experience of participating in the event will be good for his students, and The Kentucky Cycle will likely get the attention of the judges.

The cast, consisting of Pellissippi students, professors and local semi-professional and amateur actors (including perennial favorite Brian Bonner), will perform Oct. 25 at the state-level competition at Austin Peay State University. From there, the show could go to the regional contest in Birmingham, Ala., and, if it makes the cut, to the ultimate reward at the Kennedy Center.

But before the show gets ahead of itself, one role still needs to be filled: a local audience. "We're really hoping people will show up," Miller says, to experience for themselves the intense, prize-winning play that kept him up all night.

Continuing the theme of award-winning plays, Clarence Brown Theatre presents Buried Child by Sam Shepard, which won the Best Play Tony in 1996 and the Pulitzer Prize in 1979. Director Veronika Nowag-Jones (who directed the American premiere of The Brecht File at the CBT) is adding a musical element that enhances the play's abstract and disjointed tone. What better music than jazz?

"[Shepard's] plays are like jazz in their framework, but in between the frame we should be free and open to explore the journey of the characters," Nowag-Jones says. She's recruited jazz musician (and husband) Sirone (a.k.a. Norris Jones) to write original music for the production. The bassist for '70s avant garde jazz band Revolutionary Ensemble will remain on stage throughout the show. He agrees with his wife's comparison of Shepard and jazz. "In his writing, he creates a relationship with music, which are two art forms that are very harmonious. It is not so often that a director, writer or composer can come together to show the unity of the art forms."

Buried Child introduces what seems to be a typical Midwestern family whose secrets are revealed in the final act of the play. Shepard's style is to make the familiar discomforting and build the action and tension to an explosive head. Doug Hudgins, Carol Mayo-Jenkins and David Brian Alley play the leads.

If anyone can live up to the image of the beloved character of Bilbo Baggins, it's the man who played Jesus in Corpus Christi. In preparation for his role in the Actors Co-op Whippersnapper Series production of The Hobbit, Lee Lenox re-read J.R.R. Tolkien's book and watched the 1977 Rankin/Bass animated film for inspiration.

"It helped me grasp an actual characterization of Bilbo," he says. "I could take certain traits and work them into my own vision of Bilbo."

With his wide eyes framed by a cherubic face and curly brown hair, Lenox resembles a Hobbit enough to charm the children of the audience. Edward Mast's adaptation of the book is a fast-paced telling of Bilbo's adventure of a lifetime. Bilbo, with his quiet and deft nature, is recruited by the dwarves to help them recover their treasure from the dragon Smaug. In the course of the story, he meets Gollum and comes in possession of the ring.

Hobbit director Sarah Campbell says the goal of their production is "to force imagination, and to show that we can accomplish something great without a big budget and CGI effects." Smaug is played by off-stage actor Larry Williams, who uses his voice, a pointy tail and a pair of glowing red eyes to evoke the menacing dragon whose fully-realized form might be too scary for youngsters. Gollum is also a creepy figure, and the play sets up the goblins as "comic relief," Campbell says. Since The Hobbit is the prequel to The Lord of the Rings trilogy currently being revived by the films by Peter Jackson, adults can use a refresher course in the Middle-earth mythology, and children will love the introduction.