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Sometimes, it’s difficult to decide where to begin.
Does he start out talking about the play? Or does the newly renovated Burke Hawthorne Hall Theatre take precedence?
Or should he say something about how his cast, their show, is officially reopening the theater?
That’s it. The last option neatly wraps up everything for Nyalls Hartman.
He’s an associate professor in and chairman of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Department of Performing Arts. He’s also director of the play Noises Off, which opens Thursday, Nov. 12, in the Burke Hawthorne Hall Theatre.
But the play is more than just a fall production. It’s the first official production to play in the theater since it closed three years ago for renovations.
<center> <a href="http://www.2theadvocate.com/entertainment/arts/69384367.html?showAll=y&c=y" target="_blank">The rest of the story </a>
By ROBIN MILLER
Arts writer
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That’s not to say the Performing Arts Department hasn’t staged a theater season in that time. It simply moved its productions to the smaller Fletcher Hall Auditorium on campus.
Smaller space meant smaller plays.
“So, when we moved into the Burke Hawthorne Theatre this week, it was kind of overwhelming,” Hartman said. “Well, it was very overwhelming.”
It’s not that the theater is intimidating. Its new stadium-style seating allows for an audience of 206. It’s just the thought that the Performing Arts Department has moved back into a theater – a real theater.
And the theater is its own.
“What they’ve done with it is amazing,” Hartman said. “They’ve removed the balcony to convert the theater to stadium seating. So, every audience member will have an intimate look at the stage. It doesn’t matter where they’re sitting.”
Renovations also have added new costume and scene shops, dressing rooms and a makeup studio.
“We have a new lighting system, along with a new lighting and technical booth,” Hartman said. “They even added a new fly system.”
That, for those not versed in theater-speak, is a system of ropes, counterweights, pulleys and other tools designed to allow a technical crew to quickly move set pieces, lights and microphones on and off stage.
And all of these components will be ready to go when Hartman’s cast speaks the first lines of Noises Off on Thursday.
The play was written by English playwright Michael Frayn, who developed the idea in 1970 while watching a performance of his play Chinamen from a theater’s wings. He’d written the farce for Lynn Redgrave, but he found the real-life, behind-the-scenes action to be much funnier than what was happening on stage.
So came Frayn’s one-act play Exits, written and performed in 1977. He expanded the play into what is now Noises Off, a play within a play, which premiered in 1982 at London’s Lyric Theatre. The play also was made into a film in 1992 starring Carole Burnett, Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve and John Ritter.
“Noises Off is the perfect show for the grand re-opening of the Burke Hawthorne Theatre,” Hartman said. “It’s a farce about opening a play that goes terribly, horribly and delightfully awry. In choosing to open the theater with Noises Off, we are tipping our hats to its ghosts, acknowledging both their presence and our own awareness that in reopening the theater any and everything may suddenly go wrong.”
In the theater, the term “noises off” specifies sounds that are meant to originate offstage. And it’s what’s going on backstage that drives the story.
The play within the play is a dreadful sex comedy titled Nothing On, where characters are to run around in their underwear and many doors open and shut. The play opens with the dress rehearsal of Nothing On, when the cast is supposed to simply run through the play before opening night.
Problem is, cast members are still fumbling with missed cues, misspoken lines, entrances and exits and faulty props.
Act Two takes place a month later, giving the audience a backstage revelation of how these actors really don’t like each other. Offstage shenanigans lead to onstage bedlam, and the play falls into turmoil.
Then comes Act Three. Does the play finally come together? Well, the best answer to that question can be found in the Burke Hawthorne Hall Theatre.
“I directed this play as a professor about 12 years ago,” Hartman said. “This is the first time it will be performed at ULL. It’s an ensemble piece for our student company to explore. Its effectiveness relies on the work of company members behind the scenes, as well as on the stage.”
Hartman came to the university three years ago, after the theater closed its doors. He’s been teaching and directing for more then 20 years and was the founding artistic director of The People’s Repertory Theatre Company in New York, which devotes itself to social activism.
So, here is a play about a play that falls apart.
What better way to officially reopen a theater that’s been beautifully put together?
CAST: Greta Trosclair, Dotty Otley; Blaine Peltier, Lloyd Dallas; Bobby Bender, Garry Lejeune; Ali Hubbard, Brooke Ashton; Taylor Kristen DuBois, Poppy Norton; Michael Cato, Fredrick Fellowes; Sarah Hitchcock, Belinda Blair; David Huynh, Tim Allgood; Peter Falcone, Selsdon Mowbray; Belinda Blair, Understudy; Rachel Mauti, Understudy
ARTISTIC STAFF: Nyalls Hartman, director; M. Brady McKellar, costume design; Travis Johnson, technical design; Sara Birk, vocal coach; David Gipson, lighting design; Ken Harrelson, stunt coordinator; Jenna Fontenot, prop master; Katie Lamson, assistant to the director; Natalie Leblanc, stage manager; Ana-Alicia Scott, assistant stage manager; Kelsey LaCoste, assistant stage manager; Nikki Cavalier, assistant stage manager; Nathaniel Trahan, master electrician; Billy Kay, light board operator; Amanda Lyon, sound board operator; Clayton Shelvin, house manager; Amanda Caldwell, Jeremy Drewery, Krista Guillory, Brittany Ruiz, Martin Smith, Nathanael Trahan, Derrick Turner, deck crew; Ashley Brown, Megan Laque, Kelly McCarthey, Elizabeth Satterly, costume run crew; Jennifer Potter, poster/program designer
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