Theater fanatics who enjoy dramatic, home-hitting performances as much as an experimental trip in subversive entertainment will have eight reasons to cheer this semester when Journeys:Explorations of New Work opens Friday in the Christian H. Moe Laboratory Theater.

The program consists of eight original plays concocted by undergraduates and graduates in SIUC’s Theater Department. There will be an 8 p.m. performance Friday and Saturday and a 2 p.m. performance Sunday the next two weekends.

The plays are situated in bills called Journeys Far and Journeys Near. The bills will flip-flop times each week so that audiences can see all the plays in one weekend.

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Head of Playwrighting David Rush said the performances were divided up depending on the content of each performance’s four plays.

I tried to find a thematic unity for each of the evenings, he said. Some of the plays are more experimental and closer to the edge. They deal with somewhat more controversial issues. I called those Journeys Far because they’re going way out.

The other evening will be plays that are more introspective and deal with more internal, domestic issues.

Lynn Eaton, a graduate student in playwrighting, said the eight plays will be largely diverse in topics because of the variety of writers.

Such diversity ranges from sex to fairy tales. Greg Wendt’s After the Blowjob tells the story of a man’s conversation with his conscience after an encounter with a prostitute.

And The Vicky Pond Show, which was written and directed by Eaton, shows what would happen if a few of our favorite fairy tale characters had the misfortune of being the main subjects on talk shows.

The play is not something Eaton said is typically portrayed in theater performances.

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It’s not run of the mill theater where you suffer, you cry and you leave or you learn something.

Wendt, a graduate student in telecommunications, said his play may give someone second thoughts when it comes to cheating on their significant other.

Virtually everyone has thought about stepping out on their partners, he said. Much media glamorizes affairs and cheating where one partner has an optimum, and this gives a realistic look at what one has to confront when they do cheat.

While the plays will offer audiences entertainment based on a slew of issues, the Journeys program will give those involved the practical experience they will need with putting on an original performance.

Thomas Kidd, a graduate student in directing, said original performances require more work and changes than plays that have been done and redone.

When you go through community and high school theater even some professional work before you get to the University, it’s generally been with standard scripts that are already out there and have been through the staging process, he said.

If you’re going to be doing theater that’s going to take us to wherever theater is going to go in the next 20 years, you have to learn that theater is more about creating a piece of art than staging a piece of art.

Whether it’s in the challenging expressionism of Ritual of Steel or the naturalism of Leaving Nikishka, Rush said the crowd on hand for the Journeys program Far or Near will have emotions evoked one way or another.

You will like something about the evening no matter what it is, he said. And, hopefully, you will not like something about the evening, but you will certainly be provoked and challenged. And that’s the purpose of it.

BIG FACTOID/INFO BOX:Performances for Journeys Far will be at 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 30 and Saturday, Feb. 7 as well as a Sunday matinee at 2 p.m. on Feb. 1.

Performances for Journeys Near will be at 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 31 and Friday, Feb. 6 as well as a Sunday matinee at 2 p.m. on Feb. 8.

Admission is $4. For information call (618) 453-3001

The Vicky Pond Show

The Trail of Martha Carrier

Sex, Santa and Ugly Shoes