An Evening w/Provincetown Players

Suicide, drugs and prostitution are a few of the sins depicted in three one-act plays that will be put on several times throughout this week as the SIUC Theater Department pays tribute to the epic theater that started it all.

An Evening with the Provincetown Players is comprised of three one-act plays as a tribute to the Provincetown Players, a theater company that was in Provincetown, Mass., from 1915 through 1929.

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Provincetown Players wanted to create the American voice, J. Thomas Kidd, a third-year graduate in theater, said. They were really responsible for changing American theater.

The three one-act plays are Eugene O’Neill’s The Long Voyage Home, Pendleton King’s Cocaine and Susan Glaspell’s Trifles. Kidd, director of The Long Voyage Home, said that while other theater companies seemed to follow the structure of Broadway plays, the Provincetown Players opened the doors to a new world of theater.

They were committed to creating a new style of theater, Kidd said. When they started writing they created the melodrama that we are used to seeing today.

In The Long Voyage Home a man trying to give up his life as a merchant sailor is drugged and placed onto the boat that he once escaped.

It’s about people struggling for their dream, Kidd said. All of the plays are about ordinary people struggling through life.

Catherine Gleason, director of Trifles, said the one-act play is centered around the women of the play, and the theme is one of past as well as modern times.

The relevance of ideas back then are still relevant today, Gleason, a second-year graduate in theater from Chicago, said. It has a real feminist theme to it, a theme of isolation that is important to the modern audience.

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Brandon Belzer, director of Cocaine, describes it as a story of integrity and disposition. The play is about a couple trying to kick a drug addiction.

It deals with facing the truth of an addiction, he said. There’s just a slew of Provincetown Players plays out there. I would have been more than happy to do any of those, but I think this (Cocaine) one rounds out the evening best.

Like the students of the Provincetown Players, Belzer said SIUC theater students receive quality experience while performing in productions.

You get a lot of hands-on experience here, he said. That’s what is so great about the program.

Julie Espisito, a senior in theater from Chicago, said that although performing in the tribute to Provincetown Players is challenging, she is excited about learning more about the theater group.

It’s nice to be in a performance that you know about some of its history especially American plays, Espisito said.

One of the hardest tasks for the directors was designing the set.

We had to come up with a basic design idea to accommodate all three plays, Kidd said. It made some interesting challenges, but it was kind of worth the sacrifice.

To fit each play and capture the scenery of Provincetown, which was on a sea line, the stage is designed as if it is near a sea coast.

Ben Kramer, a senior in theater from Fulton, likes the overhaul of McLeod Theater for the tribute.

The stage is a wharf, Kramer said. The whole set is wonderful. The people in the audience can actually smell the salt in the air.

While witnessing a sense of pleasant, live entertainment, Kidd said that the audience members will be emotionally exposed to the theater teachings of the Provincetown Players.

All the plays have characters that the audience will sympathize with, Kidd said. They will want the characters to achieve their goals. They will leave with questions about the characters, and that’s the best way to leave.

Tickets for An Evening with the Provincetown Players are available at the McLeod Theater box office. The plays will be performed at 8 tonight, Saturday, Wednesday and Thursday, and at 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and $5 for children and SIUC students with an I.D. For more information call (618) 453-3001.