tl20021010-000 "The Tomierilighb Baltimore's #1 College Paper - Published Twice-Weekly - www.thetowerlight.com Thursday, 10/10/02 Retreat offers 'majestic' time 5 Students voice opinions on war 7 Realist painter to hold slide lecture 11 'Rules' depicts sex, good acting 14 Departments News Campus Briefs..... Nation Police Blotter 5 6 8 8 Arts 11 High Road 14 In A Theater Near You 18 Sports 24 Punt, Pass & Pick 22 In This Corner 24 Classifieds 19 Opinion I I 2 Play to depict realities of war Lisa Johnson The Towerhght Heidi Eurich, a senior theater major, performs a scene from ""Alchemy of Desire/Dead Man's Blues,"" showing at the Center for the Arts Mainstage Theatre. Eurich said the play takes its audience on a journey of loss, denial, lust and grief during an unnamed war. Tickets are $5 for students. Performances begin Friday of contemporary play revolving around the trials of war Samantha Margolis Allison Barger The Towerlight Humor, tragedy and lust take center stage for the next two weeks in ""Alchemy of Desire/Dead Man's Blues,"" a story of love, desire and the trials of war. The story will be played out in the Center for the Arts Mainstage Theatre. The six-member cast will deliver seven per-formances over two weeks, combining both comic and tragic elements, accompanied by song. ""Alchemy of Desire"" is the story of a widow, Simone, who grieves the loss of her husband to an unnamed war. The play takes its audience on a spiritual journey through the struggle of a corn-munity to save Simone's soul and bring her back to the land of the living with love, song and buck-ets of fried chicken. ""[The play] takes you on [Simone's] journey of dealing with [the loss of her husband] and how s h e grieves, said senior theatre major Heidi Eurich, who plays Simone. ""A lot of it is denial; a lot of it is heavy lust; a lot of it is deter-mination to get him back, to want to be with him."" As a contemporary play revolving around the trials of war, ""Alchemy of Desire"" illustrates the 11 ""I wanted a really international and multicultural cast because I didn't want this to be about a particular group of people who belong to one culture losing against some other culture."" Juanita Rockwell director, 'Alchemy of Desire' truth and reality of modern issues. Senior electronic 'media and film major Shaun Russell, the only male in the cast, plays Jamie, Simone's late husband. A current officer in the Army Reserves, Shaun said he feels a special con-nection with his character. ""The death of war is an actual state,"" he said. ""Listening to the other characters and how they deal with the facts of war and looking at the peo-ple they've lost in war makes me have a connec-tion to my family and makes me feel stronger about what I'm doing."" Director Juanita Rockwell, who is also the coor-dinator for the Master of Fine Arts Program, is proud of her fifth Towson production. This year, the cast had the opportunity to work with the playwright, Caradid Svich. ""In my time here, I have done a lot of mostly new works and, in at least a couple of the cases, the playwrights have been here,"" Rockwell said. ""I think that having the playwright is very special. Just having the playwright at the rehearsal See ALCHEMY OF DESIRE, page 15 Today High 66 Low 58 Friday High 65 Low 57 Saturday High 71 Low 56 Sunday High 71 Low 62 Monday High 66 Low 55 "
