University of Wisconsin Oshkosh senior Luke Scorcio knows the theatre life, as rewarding as it is, isn’t necessarily glamorous. It’s hard work.
The Fond du Lac native sat down for a recent interview highlighting his department’s upcoming season-opening play, Sept. 26’s More Fun Than Bowling, as a break from roving the campus and promoting the show.
“I’ll be in Reeve handing out fliers and buttons,” said Scorcio, 21, who, last year alone, acted, stage managed and sound designed UW Oshkosh theatre productions. And when he wasn’t on stage or behind the scenes, he was manning the box office… and serving as president of the student-run Theatre Arts Board.
Scorcio and company aren’t taking any breathers; they’ll kick of UW Oshkosh Theatre’s 2012-13 season on Sept. 26 with Bowling, a play that sets the stage for a run of five shows connected by their focus on human foibles under the season theme “Saving the World From Sanity.”
As the department bills it, the season’s shows are an examination of “the fine line between perception and how individuals’ versions of reality, impacted by traditions, family expectations and deep-seated needs, show men and women at their most hilarious, heartbreaking and, above all, human.”
“Witty dialogue and puns,” said Scorcio, who will portray “Mr. Dyson.” “It really is about people and their relationships, about how they deal with the past and present.”
“I think the season will be highly entertaining,” said UW Oshkosh Theatre Professor and Department Chair Merlaine Angwall, who directs UW Oshkosh Theatre’s Nov. 14 through Nov. 18 run of The Christmas Schooner. “Each of the plays has its own atmosphere; each of the plays takes the audience to another world.”
Bowling, a play written by Steven Dietz and directed by UW Oshkosh professor Jane Purse-Wiedenhoeft, features a “backwater bowling alley owner who has lost two wives to ‘freak’ bowling accidents and sees them gardening at their graves.” It “explores the supportive love of a father and daughter who set out on a life path riddled with gutter balls.”
“More Fun than Bowling is a familiar place to many Wisconsinites, but through comedy and a touching story, it takes the audience to a new and quirky reality,” Angwall said.
That’s followed by The Christmas Schooner, based on the true story of a Great Lakes sailing ship crew that made a holiday tradition of dangerous, icy journeys on Lake Michigan to deliver Christmas trees to German-American families in Chicago. Angwall directs and describes the musical as a tale “stepped in maritime history and folklore.” “The score is brilliant, and the script transports the audience to life on the Great Lakes in 1870,” she said.
The Theatre department is also holding open casting for the November show to community actors. Auditions will be held on Sept. 17 and 18 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the Experimental Theatre on campus. Actors are asked to prepare a one-to-two-minute monologue and 32 bars of a Broadway song.
UW Oshkosh Theatre professor and award-winning playwright Richard Kalinoski directs the absurdist plays American Dream and Zoo Story from Feb. 13 through Feb. 17. That is followed by the Theatre Department’s one-act plays on March 7 through March 9.
The season concludes April 24 with Mad Woman of Chaillot – a “comic fable” centered on a plot to tap into oil beneath Paris, of all places.
“It invites the viewer into a complete world under the streets of Paris,” Angwall said. “The play asks the audience how far they willing to go for oil.”
To order tickets, call (920) 424-4417 or visit uwosh.edu/theatre. Visit uwosh.edu/fapa for a full list of UW Oshkosh music events and art exhibits.
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