Features

Cast prepares 2 Tennessee Williams plays

March 2, 2017

Freshman theatre major Tiffany Hall of North Platte speaks to senior psychology major Mikayla Stephenson from Scottsbluff. Hall plays an aging mother named Bella McCorkle, and is comforted in this scene by her longtime friend Jessie, played by Stephenson.

“If a fool’s hell bent on destruction, no reason to regret his making it, Em.”

Lars Johnson
Antelope Staff

The cast and crew are waiting with anticipation as Two x Tenn opens tonight, Feb. 15. Two x Tenn is the first show of 2017 for the UNK theatre department and is being directed by Jack Garrison.

Brenden Zwiebe, a sophomore theatre major from Lincoln, confronts freshman theatre major Megan Hayhurst, Scottsbluff, during a front porch scene. Zwiebel plays Jake, an abusive plantation worker, while Hayhurst plays Flora, his battered wife.

“’Twenty-seven Wagon Loads of Cotton’ is the more well-known of the two Tennessee Williams’ one-acts,” Garrison said.

“…in fact I had never even heard of ‘Some Problems for the Moose Lodge’ before I started looking for one acts,” he said. “I chose them because the themes come out very clearly, and they contrast very well.”

“I’ve always liked to do Tennessee Williams. I’ve done two or three of his full-length plays. This gave me an opportunity to play around with his styles.” -Jack Garrison

The show consists of two separate one-act plays written by Tennessee Williams, one of the most important American playwrights of the 20th century. “Twenty-Seven Wagon Loads of Cotton” is a dramatic story that deals with a woman’s struggle with pain and oppression on a southern cotton plantation. The second one-act, “Some Problems for the Moose Lodge,” is a tragic comedy centered around one dysfunctional family after the death of a family member.

“The first play, ‘Twenty-seven Wagons,’ was written in 1946, and the second play was written in 1980,” Garrison said. “They sort of bracket out Tennessee Williams’ life as a playwright. I’ve always liked to do Williams’ plays. This gave me an opportunity to play around with his styles… He writes about some pretty ugly things, like distortion and abuse. All of these are to illustrate his theme that he thinks that there are two kinds of people in the world: the animals, the brutes and the delicate, vulnerable victims.
You see these illustrated very well in these two plays.”

Many of the students involved with this production are new to the theatre program. “It’s been very impressive to see the whole cast come together as a group and tackle these hard subjects, especially with so many newer actors,” said Mikayla Stephenson, a senior psychology major in the cast. “This is what educational theatre should be.”

The shows are in the Studio Theatre, located in the basement of the Fine Arts building. Because it is a smaller space than the Miriam Drake Theatre upstairs, audiences will be up close and personal with the action happening on-stage.

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