Sense and Nonsense, the sixth in the SOLOs series of performances filmed on the Hooker-Dunham stage, airs this Friday, March 19 at 7:30 simultaneously on YouTube and BCTV . The showing will be followed by an online public “After Party” with the cast. SOLOs is a co-production of the Hooker-Dunham Theater and the Rock River Players (RRP).
“Sense and Nonsense” consists of a series of monologues that take aim at the destructive nonsense of gender stereotypes.
Cyndi Cain Fitzgerald’s “Aphra Behn: A Woman of Ideas” celebrates Women’s History Month by introducing audiences to this powerful 17th century playwright, poet, and translator who was denied her rightful place in literary history because she was a woman. Jessica Gelter directs.
Anneli Curnock challenges gender roles in a different way. In “The Creature Speaks,” Anneli performs the scene in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein when the creature confronts Frankenstein demanding that he create another creature to end the torture of being totally shunned and alone.
In “Elinor,” written and directed by Michael Nethercott, Cassandra Holloway portrays a stoic wartime nurse who felt she had to hold in her feelings to be able to care for severely injured soldiers. Elinor finds herself, many years later, overwhelmed by emotion.
Ian Hefele looks at a different aspect of the damaging nature of sexual stereotypes. In a piece written by playwright Sadie Portman, Ian’s character struggles with trying to maintain his sanity living “24×7” with his husband and their children. He rails about those who treat him as their “token gay friend” and those who demand to know which of his children’s two fathers is their mother.
Jenny Holan provides lighter interludes with the whimsical nonsense of Lewis Carroll’s poetry.
Coming up next in SOLOs is “Episode 7 – Originals.” Bahman Mahdavi, producer, describes it as “our most ambitious undertaking yet with all original material and enhanced production values.” Episode 8, to be aired in May, will be produced by RRP’s artistic director, Annie Landenberger.
Friday 19 March, 2021 at 7:30pm at https://youtu.be/nAgNwQAaKdk
CONTACT: Jon Mack (jonmackvt@gmail.com; 802-348-7159)
Photos; All photos are stills courtesy of the production:
