Rebecca Gilman’s 1999 hit, “Spinning Into Butter,” the third most produced play of the 2000-2001 season, is debuting at Loyola’s Marquette Theatre Friday Nov. 7.
The play tells the story of a small private college campus, where racist issues arise and the dean ends up openly admitting she is a racist.
With a theme such as racism, controversy is sure to be lingering not far behind. Director Laura Hope commented that “this is a serious satire.” She has been at Loyola for two years and “Spinning Into Butter” is her second production. Her first was last spring’s debut, “Nine Parts of Desire,” which featured the perspectives of nine women on the war in Iraq. Because both feature such delicate subjects, Hope explained why she decided to direct “Spinning Into Butter.”
“We are in 2008, almost 2009, and are still dealing with it (racism). It’s appalling that people go to college to get educated, but such cowardly incidents do not cease to come up,” she said, referring to last year’s Biever Hall graffiti incident where some students wrote anti-Semitic slurs on the bathroom mirror.
Hope teaches a course in black theatre and mentioned that last year, when discussing the Biever Hall episode and other similar ones happening in New York, she decided “it was the right timing, especially with everything going on in our society.”
“It’s always dangerous to anticipate how the audience will react. I hope it will make them think,” Hope said.
The overall theme of this production is institutionalized racism, and how racism creeps into our lives on a daily basis. “It’s the little things, the snickering, who you sit next to on a bus,” Hope said.
As for the cast, Laura Friedmann, theatre arts freshman, plays Dean Sarah Daniels; theatre arts freshmen James McBride and Andrew Chau, play students Ross and Greg; Chris Bohnstengel, theatre arts junior, plays Dean Strauss; theater arts senior Colby Lemaster, plays Mr. Meyers; theatre arts/mass communication freshman Ashley Osbourn plays Kenney and Joshua Smith, theatre arts freshman, plays Patrick.
Alexia Barrail can be reached at [email protected].
