EARLY LIBERTY by Rita Anderson, Lab Theatre, Texas State University, January 31 - February 2, 2013

(







Texas State University Theatre Center, 430 Moon Street, San Marcos)

presents

Early Liberty
by Rita Anderson
Directed by Robert Wighs
January 31-February 2 at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, February 3 at 2:00
Texas State University (Lab Theatre)

A play about false fronts and true love—about plans, and yardsticks we never measure up to.

When Mark Haywood follows the beacon into Lighthouse Cove nothing is what it seems. But if Mark’s world is falling apart despite increasingly-frantic efforts to keep it together, then the hotel proprietor and his family need a special kind of rescue from each other. Just what will it take for Selma to grow up and for Mark to wake up? Can these dueling opposites save the hotel and find a way to be together? Set in 1985 on the Atlantic shore, Early Liberty explores the limits and boundlessness of love and hope, and the darker side of what it means to dream.

“Life is about paying attention to the right things,” but what happens when the people and places you consider safe aren’t? What is “safe” and who spells “Home”?

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As You Like It, Texas State University, San Marcos, April 6 - 16

Marketa Fantova's designs for As You Like It at Texas State University established at a glance the intentions of director Chuck Ney. The action opens at Duke Frederick's court, a bare space at the front of the wide thrust stage, bounded to the rear by a high, chill wall with a blue metallic sheen. That wall initially appears featureless, except for the edifice of steel tubing and dark metal treads parked against it -- the sort of movable ladder one might expect to find in a warehouse. Concealed doors open from that blank wall, including one at the top of the edifice. Characters descend or climb those precarious stairs that sway, suggesting a subtle danger.

The court is equally bare and cold. Young Orlando is angered by the neglect shown to him by his elder, inheriting brother Oliver. Duke Frederick, the ominous usurping head of this city state, stalks onstage accompanying by bodyguards whose chief function is to walk and stalk in step with him.

When the duke's daughter Celia and her banishéd best girl friend Rosalind flee to the forest, the metal barrier vanishes, to reveal a striking, deep stage picture very similar to that depicted on the poster for this production. Fantova has established progressive inclines running from side to side of the stage, usable as steps or as ramps, and she uses cylinders of white semi-lucent fabric to suggest the trees of a grove, perhaps of birches. Although exiled Duke Senior speaks to his band of the "icy fang and the churlish chiding of the winter's wind," their white and blue world, though suggested merely, feels far warmer than that of the court.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Secret Identity by Scott Matthew Harris, Texas State University, January 27 - 30

Received directly:

presents

Secret Identity

by Scott Matthew Harris

directed by Robert Wighs

January 27^th – 29^th at 7:30 p.m. and January 30^th at 2:00 p.m.

PSH Foundation Studio Theatre, Texas State Theatre Center

430 Moon St., San Marcos (click for map)

Tickets $8 general admission and $5 for students with a valid Texas State ID.

For reservations, call the Texas State Box Office as (512) 245-2204.

Tickets will go on sale Monday January 24^th at 10:00 a.m.

In Scott Matthew Harris’s new play Secret Identity, Arthur Daniels owns an auto parts store in Brooklyn. He leads a normal life, but he has a secret that has cost him his marriage and his relationship with his son. And now, a visit from an old acquaintance may force him to give up what he holds most dear: his true identity.