All the Campus Is a Stage This Summer

Molly Meeker '74 (right) and Broadway actress Annette Miller in the 1995 Summer Theatre production of Eleemosynary. Meeker is among the alumnae returning for the 1996 season, which begins June 25.

You think you're busy? Consider the yearly challenge met by Summer Theatre at Mount Holyoke. Producing director Michael Walker sums up the task: "We do eleven plays in eight weeks in two theatres with only fifty people. It's like putting on an eight-week commencement."

This year the professional summer stock company will present eight main-stage productions and three children's plays for its twenty-sixth season in residence at the College. Working alongside the Actors' Equity cast and crew will be several MHC alumnae. They include Caitlin Clarke '74, Molly Meeker '74, and Courtney Flanagan '70. Professor emeritus of theatre arts Jim Cavanaugh will also return.

Most years (but not this one) current MHC students also work onstage and backstage, gaining experience in all areas of theatre. Walker says the fourteen-hour days teach collaboration, meeting deadlines, dedication, and other skills that can help students in any profession. About 300 MHC undergraduates have trained at Summer Theatre. Several have gone on to important arts careers, including Broadway director Gloria Muzio '75; Nana Greenwald '73, producer of the film The Fugitive; Sandy Shinner '72, associate director at Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago; television actress Mary Kane '83; and Fontaine Syer '69, Courtney Flanagan '70, and Christine Smith '73, who started their own theatre in Saint Louis.

Although it began in the MHC theatre department and was for a time its own College department, today Summer Theatre is a financially independent corporation that maintains close cooperative ties with the College. The plays bring some 20,000 people to campus each summer, showing off the College's beauty as well as its arts offerings.

This summer's season runs from June 25 through August 17, and offers a variety of comic and dramatic fare. Here's the lineup: Neil Simon's comedy about the bumpy path of true love, Chapter Two, June 25-29; Alan Ayckbourn's wild British-flavored romp, Relatively Speaking, July 2-6; the romantic comedy Poor Richard by Jean Kerr, July 9-13; Agatha Christie's puzzler The Unexpected Guest, July 16-20; the powerful drama Equus by Peter Shaffer, July 23-27; Ernest Thompson's warm and charming On Golden Pond, July 30-August 3; Lanford Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning tale of courtship Talley's Folly, August 6-10; and the smash London comedy, Phillip King's See How They Run, August 13-17.

Performances at Gettell Amphitheater for young audiences include: Goldilocks and the Three Bears, July 3-6; The Pied Piper of Hamlin, July 17-20; and The Oz Festival (The Wizard of Oz play and a parade for children), August 7-10.

For more information and tickets, call 538-2632.