Transylvania Theater gets into the spirit of PumpkinMania later this month with an eerie dark comedy.
Running Oct. 23-27 in Little Theater, “The Moors” by Jen Silverman offers a gothic take on the lives and works of the literary Brontë sisters. Reserve your free tickets, and get more details (including viewer warnings).
The production ties into similarly themed events later this month including a community jack-o’-lantern carving for the gigantic PumpkinMania Festival display, a magic show and SPOOKTACULAR Halloween Concert.
“It’s a total Halloween vibe,” said director Tosha Fowler, a professor and Lucille C. Little Endowed Chair in Theater. In the play, a governess shows up at a haunted house where two sisters and their mastiff live on the windswept, desolate moors — “then it becomes more about survival than it is actually about being a governess.”
The play is the first in the program’s 2024-25 Mainstage Series; and it’s the one where they’re going the biggest on design. This includes special effects — it rains on stage, for instance — and costumes that lean into the 1840s with wigs and gauzy outfits … think German Expressionism and singer Chappell Roan.
“It’s a wild and crazy play,” Fowler said.
The cast has been rehearsing since the school year started.
“The Moors” ties into the theater department’s theme for this performance season: “a bold and irreverent romp through the 19th century.”
Next up in the Mainstage Series is “Pride and Prejudice,” a Kate Hamill adaptation of Jane Austen’s book directed by Derrick Ledbetter. Fowler noted how the play is a funny, irreverent take on the classic novel. It runs Feb. 26-March 2.
Then get ready for the world premiere of “Ghost Music” written by Bo List and directed by Abe Reynold. Inspired by the lives of composer-pianists Robert and Clara Schumann, the production is May 8-11. It’s sponsored in part by an AthensWest Emerging Play Grant and features a team of professional actors along with the piano music of professor Greg Partain.
Also check out the program’s student-led Pioneer Series for this academic year, which kicks off with a “New Director’s Play Festival” spotlighting a variety of short plays by the directing class Nov. 24 at 2 p.m. Read more.
