International Playhouse @ UCSC

FREE!!!
May 15th-18th at 8pm.
5 short plays in different languages, each with big English supersubtitles.

The presentations include:

French: Excepts from Molière's Le Malade imaginaire (The Hypochondriac), a satiric look at doctors, illness, and greed, by the brilliant 17th century playwright. An obsessive "invalid" disposes of both his daughter and his fortune, oblivious to the impact of his actions on those around him. Miriam Ellis will direct.

German: Judith Harris-Frisk will lead her students in Der farendt Schüler im Paradeis (The Travelling Scholar in Paradise) by Hans Sachs, considered the most talented of the Meistersänger. In this play, or Fastnachtspiele, written for the pre-Lenten carnival period in Alemanic folklore, Sachs pointedly illustrates the everyday life and strife of the common people, offering a view of problems that audiences might encounter even today!

Japanese: A poem entitled "Ikiru" (To Live) by Shuntaro Tanikawa, one of the most celebrated contemporary Japanese poets, will be offered by Sakae Fujita's students, who will add a few stanzas to the original short work, dealing with their own concepts about what it is "to live." The results may be somewhat parodic or playful but they will be "real."

Russian: The Russian group will perform UKSK (or ìäëä, in Cyrillic), an original piece by William Nickell and his students based on the genre of the Soviet musical. A charismatic UCSC professor inspires his students to realize the dream of a socialist society on campus. A cast of fourteen thousand! Choreography by Maryse Meijer; Bill Nickell will direct.

Spanish: Written by the Cuban playwright Virgilio Piñera, Estudio en blanco y negro (Study in Black and White) will be directed by Paco Ramirez. Two young lovers get drawn into a rambunctious political argument between two fanatics, leading to a distressful realignment. Interesting statues and trees will be featured.