Ivy Tech Artistic Director Paul Daily. Photo by Shannon Zahnle
BY PAUL BICKLEY
Evil has visited upon the Ivy Tech John Waldron Arts Center. The 2018–19 Ivy Tech Student Productions theater season “explores the eternal question of evil with a wide range of approaches,” says Artistic Director Paul Daily.
Those approaches include realism (Coffee Break), camp (Evil Dead the Musical), and gothic horror (Jekyll and Hyde). “The season is eclectic,” Daily says, “because evil takes many forms, often resulting from bad choices and ignoring the consequences of what we pursue.”
The season began in August with Ivy Tech alumna Brennen Edwards’ play Coffee Break, which presents a day in the lives of a manager and several employees at a chain coffee shop when one the workers is about to get fired.
Evil Dead the Musical, a 2003 parody of campy horror films like the Evil Dead series, finds five college students vacationing in a cabin where they discover a medieval book of the dead and a tape recorder. Daily says that, as its title suggests, the play spreads the humor on thick.
“Evil Dead is an inventive adaptation and feels like a roller-coaster ride,” Daily says. “It’s a lot of fun.” Performance dates are December 7, 8, and 13–15.
In Jekyll and Hyde, a 2015 adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Mr. Utterson, a lawyer, learns of a girl having been trampled in the street by an Edward Hyde. That night, Utterson recalls that one of his clients, Dr. Henry Jekyll, a scientist whose research has been called “balderdash” by another of Utterson’s friends, has willed all of his wealth and property to Hyde. Utterson resolves to unravel the mysterious relationship between the two men. Performance dates are April 12, 13, and 18–20.
“This season is unlike anything Ivy Tech Student Productions has tackled before,” Daily says. “Audiences will have a fun, shocking ride as we plumb the depths of evil.”
Appropriate ages for the last two productions are 18 and over. For more information, visit magbloom.com/itst1819.
