tl20030414-000 "ei""IihIi Baltimore's #1 College Paper - Published Twice-Weekly - www.thetowerlight.com Monday, 4/14/03 Staff aims to put face to abuse 5 TU students help build Balt. home 7 Sister Hazel plays Recher Wednesday 13 'Ghosts': profound new IMAX movie 14 Departments Opinion 2 News 5 Nation At War 8 Arts 13 In A Theater Near You 14 Sound Bites 16 Sports 20 Athlete of the Week 18 In This Corner 20 Classifieds 17 'MY headed to Kennedy stage Steve Lafferty The Towerlight Senior theater major Paul Wissman lies on a table while rehearsing the death scene from ""Shakespeare's R&J,"" an adaptation of the classic ""Romeo and Juliet"" tale. Wissman plays Juliet in the show, which will be performed at the Kennedy Center in D.C. Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m. Towson production one of five plays nationwide chosen to be performed at Kennedy Center festival Amy M. Bruce The Towerlight Sometimes less really is more. Anyone who needs proof can just look to the theater department's production of ""Shakespeare's R&J."" ""It's really just what can happen with four guys, four cubes, a piece of red cloth, a director and a lot of hard work,"" the play's director, Michael Caloia, said. Caloia's Towson production was one of five plays nationwide select-ed to be performed at the Kennedy Center's 35th American College Theater Festival, which runs April 14 through 20. Caloia, a recent TU theater gradu-ate, said the journey to the Kennedy Center festival began last spring when a copy of the play, which was written by New York playwright Joe Calarco, was brought to his atten-tion by voice professor Steve Satta. Caloia decided to mount a produc-tion of the play, and the rest, as they say, is history. The story follows four high school students attending a private board-ing school as they struggle to find their own identities by experiencing Shakespeare's tragic love story in a closed-minded, super-strict environ-ment. ""Through the play [the boys] sort of mature as adults and find what they stand for as human beings, what their views on sexuality, authority, friendship and romantic love [are],"" Caloia said. ""They find what they value for each of those things."" Senior theater major Jurgen Hooper, who plays Student No. 1 and Romeo, came across the play and decided to bring it to Satta, who became the faculty advisor for the production. ""I thought it'd be incredibly phys-ically demanding, and it'd be a real-ly fun show to work on,"" Hooper said. ""I read it, and I fell in love with it and thought it was just a wonder-ful story."" The one characteristic Caloia liked most about the play was its lack of opulent costumes and grand set designs. ""I'm a big fan of simplicity and how to tell a story, basically, through characters and dialogue and the relationships that they have,"" he said. ""The thing I really love about this play is how simple it is. It really brings theater down to the basics."" The cast members had no idea they would be performing at the Kennedy Center when they present-ed the show on Sept. 14 at the Studio Theatre in the Center for the Arts. Caloia videotaped the produc-tion and submitted it for considera-tion in the regional festival, which was held in January. At the regional festival Caloia picked up an award for best director and learned that the production had been selected from all regions nationwide to perform two shows at the Kennedy Center. ""We started rehearsing for this about a year ago,"" senior theatre See R&J, page 16 Today High 66 Low 45 Tuesday High 73 Low 54 Wednesday High 81 Low 49 Thursday High 62 Low 43 Friday High 50 Low 40 "
