SOUTH PACIFIC, SPAMALOT and More Set for NKU Theatre & Dance's 2013-14 Season

The Department of Theatre & Dance at Northern Kentucky University has announced its 2013-2014 Academic Season of main stage shows.

FALL 2013 SEMESTER:

MOBY DICK REHEARSED

by Orson Welles
(Samuel French)

9/26 - 10/6

An ingenious idea is employed to accommodate the sweep of this classic story on the stage. A Shakespearean company who puts down their rehearsal sides of Lear and curiously take up those of a new play entitled Moby Dick. On the rehearsal stage of platforms, the teasers overhead suddenly become yardarms with sails and a tall ladder becomes a mast. The platforms become the decks of the ship on which the cast sails through the storms and tribulations of the Pequod hunting for Moby Dick.

SOUTH PACIFIC

by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
(Rodgers and Hammerstein)

10/24 -11/3

Set in an island paradise during World War II, two parallel love stories are threatened by the dangers of prejudice and war. Nellie, a spunky nurse from Arkansas, falls in love with a mature French planter, Emile. Nellie learns that the mother of his children was an island native and, unable to turn her back on the prejudices with which she was raised, refuses Emile's proposal of marriage. Meanwhile, the strapping Lt. Joe Cable denies himself the fulfillment of a future with an innocent Tonkinese girl with whom he's fallen in love out of the same fears that haunt Nellie. When Emile is recruited to accompany Joe on a dangerous mission that claims Joe's life, Nellie realizes that life is too short not to seize her own chance for happiness, thus confronting and conquering her prejudices.

AS YOU LIKE IT

by William Shakespeare
(No Royalty)
11/21 - 11/24, 12/4-12/8

As You Like It is considered by many to be one of Shakespeare's greatest comedies, and the heroine, Rosalind, is praised as one of his most inspiring characters and has more lines than any of Shakespeare's female characters. Rosalind, the daughter of a banished duke falls in love with Orlando the disinherited son of one of the duke's friends. When she is banished from the court by her usurping uncle, Duke Frederick , Rosalind switches genders and as Ganymede travels with her loyal cousin Celia and the jester Touchstone to the Forest of Arden, where her father and his friends live in exile. Observations on life and love follow (including love, aging, the natural world, and death) friends are made, and families are reunited. By the play's end Ganymede, once again Rosalind, marries her Orlando. Two other sets of lovers are also wed, one of them Celia and Orlando's mean older brother Oliver . As Oliver becomes a gentler, kinder young man so the Duke conveniently changes his ways and turns to religion and so that the exiled Duke, father of Rosalind, can rule once again.

SPRING 2014 SEMESTER:

ARABIAN NIGHTS

Adapted by Mary Zimmerman

(Playscripts, Inc.)

2/13 - 2/23

Based on Powys Mather's translation of The Book of the Thousand and One Night. Twelve-member cast enacts Scheherazade's tales of love, lust, comedy, and dreams Scheherazade's cliffhanger stories prevent her husband, the cruel ruler Shahryar, from murdering her, and after 1,001 nights, Shahryar is cured of his madness, and Scheherazade returns to her family. This adaptation offers a wonderful blend of the lesser-known tales from Arabian Nights with the recurring theme of how the magic of storytelling holds the power to change people. The final scene brings the audience back to a modern day Baghdad with the wail of air raid sirens threatening the rich culture and history that are embodied by these tales "A feast for the eyes and ears" ~ Chicago Magazine

A...MY NAME IS ALICE

A Musical Review by Joan Micklin Silver and Julianne Boyd

(Samuel French)

3/20 - 3/30

Winner! Outer Critics' Circle Award for Best Musical

Alice enjoyed a long run at the Village Gate Off Broadway. This slick and lively revue created by a wide variety of comedy writers, lyricists and composers offers a marvelous kaleidoscope of contemporary women. Sophisticated, bawdy, funny and insightful, the twenty numbers portray friends, rivals, sisters and even members of an all women's basketball team.

MONTY PYTHON'S SPAMALOT

by Eric Idle and John Du Prez
(Theatrical Rights Worldwide)

4/17 - 4/27 (No show on Easter, 4/20, Show added on Tues, April 22 to replace lost Sunday show)

Lovingly ripped off from the classic film comedy MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL, SPAMALOT retells the legend of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round

Table, and features a bevy of beautiful showgirls, not to mention cows, killer rabbits, and French people. Did we mention the bevy of beautiful showgirls?

DANCE '14

5/2-5/3

Our annual evening of explosive and inspiring dance, featuring NKU students and local professionals.

BREAKDOWN OF SHOW TIMES: All shows open on a Thursday evening and run over the course of 2 weekends with a total of 9 performances. There are no Monday or Tuesday performances with the exception of Monty Python's Spamalot due to Easter Sunday being dark. Finally, PLEASE NOTE As You Like It will run 11/21-11/24, break for Thanksgiving and resume on 12/4 thru 12/8.

The show times are based on the days of the week. Wednesday - Saturday performances are at 8pm. Sunday performances are matinees and will start at 3pm.

For more information call the NKU Fine Arts Box Office at 859.572.5464 or click HERE.