Berea College Theatre Finishes Season with Canadian Comedy
A production of Escape from Happiness, a play by George F. Walker, will close out another successful season of the Berea College Theatre Laboratory. The play opens with Tuesday, March 29th and will run to April 2nd. All performances take place in the McGaw Theater, Jelkyl Drama Center and will begin promptly at 8:00 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at the box office (Monday-Friday between 1:00-5:00 p.m., one hour prior to each performance) or reserved over the telephone by calling 859-985-3300. Berea College students are admitted free of charge with a valid student ID as part of their student activity fees. Performances eligible for convocation credit will take place March 30th and April 1st.
You think your family is crazy? Think again! Escape from Happiness is the third part of a roaring comedic trilogy that deals with issues such as family relationships, abuse, crime, police morality and more, while still managing to convey messages of love and interconnectedness. The play centers on a family living in a neighborhood in Canada that is growing more and more impoverished and crime-filled. Nora, the mother, lives with her youngest daughter, Gail, and “the man who looks like her husband,” Tom. When Nora and Gail return home one day to find that Gail’s husband Junior has been attacked and left for dead on the kitchen floor, they must call on the help of Gail’s sisters to get to the bottom of it. Anything to keep those untrustworthy cops from lurking around their house investigating. Who beat up Junior? Why doesn’t Tom know who he is? Who hid drugs in the basement?
Playwright George F. Walker is a native Canadian and familiar with the suburban neighborhood about which he writes. In 2009, he was awarded the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, Canada’s highest honor in the performing arts. Directing the play is senior theatre major Moriah Griffin. “I first found this play while searching for a comedic monologue for acting class my freshmen year, and when I came across it I felt like I had struck gold. When I read it the first time I couldn’t help laughing out loud, even though I was out in public, and now even though I have been working with this script for a few months I still find myself disrupting rehearsals with laughter,” Griffin said. “I think this script asks some very important questions without trying to shove the ‘right’ answers down our throats. I hope everyone who comes to see this production will laugh and find joy in the humor, but I also hope they walk away with seeds of new ideas about family relationships, individual moral responsibility, happiness and many of the other themes present in this show.”