SPONSORED BY DR. JOHN FICCA

THE PLAY’S THE THING: New Play Reading at Heartland

A new play reading of a full length play in development with audience participation, using Heartland actors playing the roles, simply staged on stools on Heartland’s stage:

John Bowen, John Fischer, Rhys Lovell, Kayla Russell, Abby Scott, Rich Tinaglia, Todd Wineburner & Michelle Woody (Directed by Rhys Lovell)

Invited credentialed responders on December 8th help the audience understand play process and structure. They are:

Eric Thibodeaux-Thompson, Associate Professor and Director of Theatre; Chair, Department of Art, Music, and Theatre, University of Illinois – Springfield

Deanna Jent, Playwright and Professor Emerita of Theatre at Fontbonne University

Tom Mitchell, Chair of Acting for the University of Illinois Department of Theatre

Meet our featured playwright, Douglas Post.

A Spy in Spite of Himself 

by Douglas Post

A Spy in Spite of Himself is a  farce and send-up of British spy stories about button-down bureaucrats operating in the grey areas of a grey society.  It concerns Fred Laffingstock, an ineffectual middle-aged man who works for the BSS, also known as the British Secret Service, also known as the Big Saucy Sausage.  Someone is spying on the spies and Fred must ferret out the culprit from a motley crew of colleagues – the ambitious Bunty Cockfoster, the very posh Stig Ripley Stripley, the extremely crude Culter McCreedy, and the shy fly-on-the-wall woman who secretly loves Fred named Droopy Muffincups.  In the course of his assignment, Fred must contend with his overbearing and brainless mother, with whom he still lives, while confiding in his closest friend and ally who happens to be the family dog.  Finally Fred collides with the truth in a twisted ending that not even a master spy could have seen coming. [General Audiences]

December 7 at 7:30 pm and December 8 at 2 pm.  $5 Donation at the door.
Reservations, please! Flex Passes do not apply to this grant-sponsored event.

“I’ll have grounds

More relative than this —

the play’s the thing

Wherein I’ll catch the

conscience of the King.

-Hamlet, Act 2, scene 2

Made possible by the Mirza Arts & Culture Grant of the Illinois Prairie Community Foundation.