Play to have its world premiere at Centre's Norton Center

RELEASED: Oct. 30, 2003

DANVILLE, KY—Centre College drama students will present the world premiere of Herman Daniel Farrell III's The Beloved Community. Under the direction of Anthony Haigh, professor of dramatic arts at Centre, the shows run from Nov. 5-8 (at 8 p.m.) in Weisiger Theatre at Centre's Norton Center for the Arts.

The cast includes: Vicki Cann, Terri L. Carter, Chad Dike, Alina Klimkina, Colin McCann, John "Buck" Rogers, Jan Sheffield and Tony Spalding, Jr.

Centre commissioned Farrell to write The Beloved Community for DramaCentre. Farrell is currently appointed as a Centre Humana Visiting Professor at the College, and he has been attending rehearsals and working with the students actors in preparation for the performances.

The Beloved Community brings three former civil-rights workers back to an unnamed liberal arts college for a symposium on "The Sixties." Although, for each of them, the 40-year gap has moved them in very different directions, they each remember their time together during "freedom summer" as one of the most important times of their lives. At the college they meet a group of contemporary students for whom the life experiences of "the elders" is ancient history. Both groups confront their values, prejudices and relationships, and explore those ideas through a play they work on together about those turbulent years. The Beloved Community works on several levels at once and asks its audience to explore their own understanding of race in America.

Farrell comments, "The compulsion to address issues of race is born of the fact that I was born with a white mother and a black father. Living this life within both worlds, between both worlds, without both worlds has tempered my view of this place, America. My plays about race attempt to construct a universe where those worlds can reside, ever so briefly, in order to explore and examine the issues that divide us, and those that unite us."

Haigh remarks, "The process of developing a new play is always an interesting one. With The Beloved Community it has also been an enlightening one. The cast and crew and all those involved with the project have been forced to learn more about where we have come from with regard to the relationships between the races and also where we might be going. I hope this play, as well as entertaining and delighting us, will also lead us to ask our own questions."

Haigh is the incoming president of the Southeastern Theatre Conference. A native of England, he's directed for the Lexington Shakespeare Festival, Creed Repertory, Abbey Theatre Durango, and others.

Tickets may be purchased through the Norton Center Box Office at (859) 236-4692.

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