Upgrades
We are very excited to tell you all that the theatre spaces in the Silver Center for the Arts are being upgraded this coming year. Improvements that we have anticipated for several years will be coming to fruition. The upgrades have been funded by charitable support from private donars.
These improvements include:
- The walls of the Cheney Studio Theatre will be pushed back six feet in each direction, allowing the installation of two more audience rows in each section.
- A double-purchase fly system, including six linesets, will be added to Smith Recital Hall.
- The proscenium arch in Hanaway Theatre will be widened by an extra 29½ inches.
- The traps in Hanaway Theatre will be widened by seven inches and will be moved upstage eleven feet.
The renovations will begin in early August of 2025. Work will continue in all three spaces throughout the academic year.
What This Means
The Administration at Plymouth State is being hugely supportive and has been an enormous help in our planning. The Plymouth State University campus has many interesting and inspiring spaces which can support all kinds of performance in lieu of the typical spaces we use which will all be under construction.
The Season
Oedipus the King
by Sophocles
October 2025. Venue: The Ice Arena.
Directed by Timothy L’Ecuyer
This production will be a joint project between Theatre, Dance, and PSU Athletics. Becky Gregoire will be working with two members of PSU’s ice hockey coaching staff under the direction of Timothy L’Ecuyer. Oedipus the King, also known by its Greek title, Oedipus Tyrannus or Oedipus Rex, is an Athenian tragedy that follows the character who solved the riddle of the sphinx while finding a fateful and tragic ending after failing to escape a dark prophecy. Anticipate themes of winding, twisted motion combined with heavy use of special effects and simulated blood poured across the ice.
This will be the show for the NHETG conference.
Mean Girls
Book by Tina Fey, lyrics by Nell Benjamin, and music by Jeff Richmond.
November 2025. Venue: The Woods behind Langdon Hall.
Directed by Fran Page.
Beginning with the setting in Kenya at the top of the show, this popular musical includes prominent themes of hunting, pack-mentalities, and finding ones way through the wilderness of social acceptance. We will be working in conjunction with PSU’s Outdoor Recreation program to stage this musical in a cutting-edge way. We have identified an ideal area in the woods behind Langdon Hall which will accomodate audiences even larger than the Cheney Studio Theatre holds, while also allowing complicated use of set props and aerial movement through the trees via careful planning with our colleagues in Adventure Recreation.
Metamorphoses
by Mary Zimmerman
March 2025. Venue: Prospect Dining Hall.
Directed by Jessie Chapman.
This is adapted from the classic Ovid poem Metamorphoses. It is a whirlwind exploration of a great many popular and fantastic ancient myths. It is always a vehicle for ingenuity and astonishing visual choices. Our intention is to pursue the popular and classic choice of implementing a real swimming pool, as we did in the Cheney Studio Theatre in 2008. We will be producing this show in collaboration with Dining Services at Plymouth State and Chartwells.
This will be the third time ever that Theatre at Plymouth State has presented dinner theatre. In order to court student attendance, performances will be presented at our usual evening times as well as three special performances during lunch on weekdays. In the event that we are not able to establish a swimming pool in the dining hall, we will fall back on a secondary plan, and the production will be presented from within the food stations in Prospect using hand-puppets.
A Chorus Line
Music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban, book by James Kirkwood Jr. and Nicholas Dante.
April 2025. Venue: Silver 3rd Floor between 305 and 302 (the student lounge).
Directed by Hannah Murray.
Environmental Theatre is a branch of the New Theatre movement of the 1960s that aimed to heighten audience awareness of theatre by eliminating the distinction between the audience’s and the actors’ space. This innovational production will tear down the separation between performer and audience by placing the viewers in a raw environment where our developing artists exist on a day-to-day basis. The student lounge is the place where the anxieties of cast-lists, rehearsal schedules, and conflicts are begun and resolved. In recognition of the importance of this space, we will arrange a small audience of approximately thirty chairs along the practice mods so that viewers can enjoy Becky Gregoire’s choreography as the fully produced musical unfolds using exactly the furnitire currently present in the lounge. We will use a full-size orchestra placed in room 302.