Mainstage Productions
TheatreOCU Mainstage provides opportunities for students to collaborate with professional theatre artists from a variety of disciplines to produce entertaining, engaging, provocative, and inclusive theatre for both the campus and the larger 野狼社区 community. Students apply skills developed in the classroom and studios in the Mainstage鈥檚 diverse offering of fully produced works ranging from a wide range of styles and genres.
Theatre Mainstage: Black Box Theater - Oct. 31 - Nov. 3, 2024 & Nov. 7-10, 2024
Produced by special arrangement with Samuel French/Concord theatricals
Two women, scientists, living hundreds of years apart, explore the meaning of legacy, motherhood, and art in this time jumping contemporary comedy. Legacy of Light links the story of the 18th century mathematician and scientist, 脡milie du Ch芒telet who became unexpectedly pregnant at 42 (during her entanglement with philosopher Voltaire), with that of a 21st century physicist desperately trying to conceive and child. Legacy of Light made its world premiere at the Arena Stage in Washington DC on May 8th, 2009.
By Karen Zacarias
Karen Zacar铆as, recently hailed by American Theater Magazine as one of the ten most-produced playwrights in the US, is known for her play Mariela in the Desert - winner of the National Latino Playwriting Award. She is one of the inaugural resident playwrights at Arena Stage, a core founder of the Latino Theatre Commons and the founder of Young Playwrights鈥� Theater, an award-winning theater company teaching playwriting in Washington, D.C. public schools. Ms. Zacarias鈥� plays have been produced by some of the country鈥檚 most respected theatre companies including the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, Arena Stage, The Goodman Theater, Round House Theater, The Denver Center, Alliance Theater, Imagination Stage, GALA Hispanic Theater, Berkshire Theater Festival, South Coast Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, Cleveland Playhouse, and San Jose Repertory Theater.
Theatre Mainstage: Burg Theater - Dec. 5-8, 2024
Produced by special arrangement with Octavio Solis
William Joad has no heir to whom he can bequeath the family farm 鈥� until he learns of Mart铆n Jodes, a young Mexican-American migrant worker descended from Tom Joad, the protagonist of John Steinbeck鈥檚 The Grapes of Wrath. In a reversal of the Joads鈥� epic Route 66 journey, William and Mart铆n embark on a road trip from California鈥檚 migrant farm camps to Oklahoma: confronting their brutal pasts, gathering a unique chorus of travelers, and forging a new American family along the way. One of the most celebrated living writers of the Mexican-American experience, Octavio Solis鈥� soaring poetry, gritty realism, and mythic scope captures the intersection of people, cultures, and migration in the American West.
By Octavio Solis
Octavio Solis is considered, by many, to be one of the most prominent Latino playwrights in America. He has written over 25 plays, included his most famous and celebrated works: Lydia, Santos & Santos, and Man of the Flesh. Solis is the recipient of the National Latino Playwriting Award, The Roger L. Stevens Award: Kennedy Center's Fund for New American Plays, Playwriting Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Playwrights' Center鈥檚 McKnight Fellowship, and Distinguished Achievement in the American Theater Award by the William Inge Center for the Arts. With works that both draw on and transcend the Mexican-American experience, Solis is an imaginative and ever-evolving writer whose work continues to cross cultural and aesthetic boundaries, solidifying him as one of the great playwrights of our time.
Theatre Mainstage: Burg Theater - Jan. 30 - Feb. 2, 2025
Considered by many to be one of the greatest plays ever written, King Lear sees two ageing fathers 鈥� one a King, the other his courtier 鈥� reject the children who truly love them. Their blindness unleashes a tornado of pitiless ambition and treachery, as family and state are plunged into a violent power struggle with bitter ends.
Caught in a carousel of memory, the head of a dysfunctional family grapples with power-hungry children and the threat of losing the empire he created. Real and imagined worlds coalesce, creating a political and personal horror that threatens to swallow the mind of a monarch.
By William Shakespeare
Theatre Mainstage: Burg Theater - April 3-6, 2025
Richard Davenport, a black captain, is assigned to a investigate a murder of a black non-commissioned officer at a segregated army base in 1944 Louisiana. Captain Taylor, the white commanding officer, worries that the murderer may be a white officer or the local Klan and fears the assignment of a black investigator only means the case is to be swept under the rug. The officers, and the soldiers they lead, confront the deeply held prejudices that are far more complex than black and white in this unique gender-blind production of Charles Fuller鈥檚 Pulitzer Prize winning play.
By Charles Fuller
Charles Fuller won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for A Soldier's Play, during its original Off-Broadway run. Fuller began his would audience and critical acclaimed career in the 1970鈥檚, creating work for the Henry Street Settlement theatre and, eventually, the Negro Ensemble Company in New York, under artistic director Douglas Turner Ward. Fuller was awarded with grants from the , , the , and the and his other notable works include The Village: a Party (1968), The Brownsville Raid (1976), and Zooman and the Sign (1980). Forty years after its original debut, A Soldier's Play made its Broadway debut on January 21, 2020, for which it was subsequently nominated and awarded the Tony Award for Best Rival of a Play despite having never previously appeared on Broadway.
Studio Series
The Studio Series repertoire is more eclectic, allowing student and faculty directors to produce works that range from reimagined classics to very new plays in an atmosphere that highlights acting, directing, and the text and deemphasizes the need for production values.
Studio Series: Burg Theater - Sept. 26-29, 2024
By Kimberly Belflower
Studio Series: Black Box Theatre - Nov. 7-10, 2024
By Madeleine George
Studio Series: Black Box Theatre - Nov. 21-24, 2024
By Euripides
Studio Series: Black Box Theatre - Feb. 13-16, 2025
By Tony Kushner
Studio Series: Black Box Theatre - Feb. 20-23, 2025
By Jason Pizzarello
Studio Series: Black Box Theatre - Feb. 27 - March 2, 2025
By Aaron Posner
Studio Series: Black Box Theatre - March 27-30, 2025
By Will Arbery
Out of the Box
Out of the Box is our student-led and operated theatre company aimed at exposing students to the realities of producing. Out of the Box features student selected titles produced exclusively with student directors and performers. Out of the Box also produces the OCU Improv Troupe which holds frequent late-night comedy shows throughout the year.
Learn more about Out of the Box by visiting our and !
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