Evento

"The Dining Room" by A.R. Gurney - Mainstage Play Maria Monti, Director

"The Dining Room"
by A.R. Gurney
April 18 May 4, 2014

Monti to direct The Dining Room

Veteran actor/director/teacher Maria Monti will direct A.R. Gurney's The Dining Room for the Willits Community Theatre this spring. The Play will run from April 18 through May 4.

Monti has been the drama teacher at Ukiah High School for the past 18 years and has performed widely in the area as an actor, dancer and director. She played Big Mama in Willits Shakespeare Company's 2011 production of "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof", and also acted in "The Fantastiks", "Park Avenue" (a Woody Allen one-act) and "Butterflies Are Free" for the Willits Community Theatre. She has also acted recently in "Shrewed" and "Inherit The Wind" and she choreographed "The Music Man" for its recent production at Mendocino College.

A.R. Gurney was a notable American playwright in the last quarter of the 20th Century. He wrote such often produced gems as "Sylvia" and "Love Letters". In "The Dining Room" he uses a single dining room as the setting for 17 different scenes in which he traces the decline and fall of the upper crust, White Anglo Saxon Protestant culture in the northeastern United States, from 1910 through 1980.

"The Dining Room" will be especially challenging for actors because in the play six actors three men and three women play 57 different roles. Monti says that a major objective of her work as director of "The Dining Room" will be to explore and flesh out the unique personhood of each of the play's 57 characters.

The cast is made up of Erin Klay, Jean Swearingen, Kevin Klay, Spencer Carlile, Steve Marston, Stephanie Roelling all delivering incredible performances.