| The
Francis Marion University Theatre's second mainstage production of the
2006-2007 season
will be Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our Youth. In 1982, on Manhattan's Upper West Side, the wealthy, articulate pot-smoking teenagers who were small children in the '60s have emerged as young adults in a country that has just resoundingly rejected everything they were brought up to believe in. The very last wave of New York City's '60s-style Liberalism has come of age—and there's nowhere left to go. In meticulous, hilarious, and agonizing detail, THIS IS OUR YOUTH follows forty-eight hours of three very lost young souls in the big city at the dawn of the Reagan Era: Warren Straub, a dejected nineteen-year-old who steals fifteen thousand dollars from his abusive lingerie-tycoon father; Dennis Ziegler, the charismatic domineering drug-dealing friend who helps him put the money to good use; and Jessica Goldman, the anxiously insightful young woman Warren yearns for. Funny, painful, and compassionate, THIS IS OUR YOUTH is a living snapshot of the moment between adolescence and adulthood when many young people first go out into the world on their own, armed only with the ideas and techniques they developed as teenagers—ideas and techniques far more sophisticated than their parents ever realize, and far less effectual than they themselves can possibly imagine. "In a season in which some of the wise men of the theater have been trying to force-feed insipid fare…to young audiences, it's sheer relief to celebrate the return of a rambunctious and witty play about wayward teenagers and post-adolescents that doesn't turn youthful travails into plastic rap…THIS IS OUR YOUTH—by turns caustic, cruel and compassionate—is the real real world." —NY Times. "This is quite simply, a sterling example of why we keep going…THIS IS OUR YOUTH is as good as theater gets." —NY Daily News. "Lonergan, whose ear for the way his characters speak is pitch-perfect, is no less attuned to the simmering potential in their silent hearts." —Variety. The cast of the Francis Marion University Theatre presentation will include Will McNamara as Dennis, Lance Butler as Warren, and Jessica N. Maggard as -- you guessed it -- Jessica. Associate Professor of Theatre D. Keith Best will direct the play with assistance from Nikki Hemingway and Ashley Leamon. |
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Reservations
for This Is Our
Youth
may be made beginning February 12 by calling the box office at
661-1365.
The box office will be open to reserve seats Monday through Friday from
1 pm to 5 pm. All tickets are free to the public. Curtain
is at 8:00. The Francis Marion University Theatre's 2006-2007 season opened with Howard Richardson and William Berney's Dark of the Moon and the season will conclude with Neil Simon's Fools (April 12-14, 2007). The University Experimental Theatre also presented a series of one-act plays directed by students in FMU directing classes November 29-30, 2006. For additional information contact Mr. Gourley in FAC 224, 661-1538, agourley@fmarion.edu. Interested in working "behind the scenes"? Contact Mr. Granath in FAC 222, 661-1536, dgranath@fmarion.edu. |
