FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Date: February 7, 2003
Contact: Donna McCracken, 206-6716
UIS theater program to present award-winning drama
Winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Outer
Critics Circle Award, and the Drama Desk Award, the play has been hailed as “a
landmark,” “mesmerizing, emotionally raw,” with “enormous emotional power and
intellectual strength.” Eric Thibodeaux-Thompson, director of the UIS
production, calls it “one of Sam Shepard’s masterpieces. It manages to affect
us with a poetic sense, as well as intriguing character development.”
A Lie of the Mind tells the story of two desperate families connected by marriage. As the play begins, Beth, brain-damaged after a savage beating from her husband, Jake, is living in Montana with her parents. Jake sends his brother, Frankie, to see if Beth is dead or alive, but Frankie falls in love with Beth himself. Breaking away from his possessive mother, Jake sets out to regain his wife, yet in the end he allows her to stay with Frankie. The play closes with a lonely Jake seeking communion with his dead father -- hoping to find order and meaning in the present by coming to terms with the specters of the past.
The cast features Ed Barnett as Frankie, Anna Dow as Sally, Elizabeth George as Beth, Steven McDavid as Jake, James Gasparin as Baylor, Shelly Huck as Meg, Shirley McConnaughay as Lorraine, and Bruce Schempp as Mike.
Tickets – $10 general admission, $6 for faculty/staff, and $4 for UIS students with current ID – can be purchased at the UIS bursar’s office, level one of the PAC, telephone 206-6738 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, or at the door.
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