|
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
||
 |
|
Larry Guth and Deanna McBeath rehearse a scene from Endgame. PHOTOGRAPHS BY SUE KROPP |
Endgame, Oberlin’s Third Summer Theater Offering, Opens Tonight
Paul Koch checks the
script.
Lisl Walsh, a sophomore
from Danielson, Connecticutt, is ready to prompt actors who forget thier
lines.
JULY 31, 2000--Summer 2000 may well mark the rebirth of summer theater in Oberlin.
Local groups are presenting not one, not two, but three productions in Hall Auditorium this summer. To Black River's production of Prince Hal and Falstaff on Hall's main stage (July weekends) and the MAD* Factory's musical Pippin (August 3-6) in Little Theater, add a third: Samuel Beckett's black comedy Endgame, directed by Oberlin native Paul Koch.
Presented by the Oberlin-based Tappan Theater Project, Lorain County's newest theater troupe, the one-act drama will run Monday, July 31, through Wednesday, August 2, at 8 P.M. on Hall's main stage. Admission is free; tickets will be available at the Hall box office an hour before curtain time.
The Tappan Theater Project is a six-member ad hoc troupe that includes three current or former Oberlin College students and three current or former Yale University students.
The group "has convened in Oberlin for the summer with the goal of enhancing the already well-established summer theater scene," says Koch, who formed the company with Ellen Willett '00. Willett is producing Endgame and serving as stage manager.
Oberlin-student cast members are Max Fleischman, a graduate student in the conservatory from Ardmore, Pennsylvania, and Lisl Walsh, a rising sophomore in the college from Danforth, Connecticut. Performing with them are Yale Class of 2000 alumni Larry Guth and Deanna McBeth.
The director, a 1996 graduate of Oberlin High School and the son of Christian Koch, professor of computer science, is a rising senior at Yale and a veteran of the MAD* Factory.
He began his theater career with the Lorain County Children's Pioneer Theater and joined MAD* Factory in 1992. In 1996 he made his directorial debut with the MAD* production of Voices from the High School.
Koch also has directed Our Town on the Yale campus and two plays last summer at the Playwrights Theater Festival in New York City. This spring, on leave from Yale, he studied with Paul Moser, Oberlin associate professor of theater, and appeared in Moser's production of Buried Child.
The London Daily Telegraph described Endgame as "a masterpiece of kind cruelty" last fall when the play was presented at the Barbican Theater. "Yet the courage," wrote Daily Telegraph critic Charles Spencer, "and the gallows humour of the play, the acknowledgment of the consolations of love and companionship, the sheer endurance, mean that you emerge from his work feeling braced, even exhilarated."
The Tappan Theater Project conducts weekly play readings on Tuesdays and acting workshops on Saturdays. Times and locations are available at 774-9816.
Please send comments, questions, and suggestions about Oberlin Online news and feature articles to online.news@oberlin.edu.
