Innovative comedy springs onto LSSU centre stage

NEWS RELEASE

LAKE SUPERIOR STATE UNIVERSITY

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SAULT STE. MARIE, MI – An incessantly ringing cell phone in a quiet café; a stranger at the next table who has had enough, and a dead man with a lot of loose ends.

So begins Dead Man's Cell Phone, a wildly imaginative new comedy by Pulitzer Prize finalist, Sarah Ruhl.

The play will be presented on the Lake Superior State University Arts Center main stage March 27-29 in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.

“It’s a work about how we memorialize the dead, and how that remembering changes us,” says LSSU theatre professor and production director Jennifer Hunter. “Here is the odyssey of a woman trying to connect in a technologically obsessed world. Cell Phone is best described as film noir meets graphic novel, meets the bizarre.”

Hunter has been a fan of Ruhl’s writing since she saw The Clean House several years ago.

“Her style of writing is easy to listen to. It connects the audience and the character right away,” says Hunter. “Just when you get comfortable, Sarah Ruhl will deliver the unexpected. I really believe this play will leave the audience thoroughly entertained and maybe a touch inspired too.”

The stage setting and technical design for this production will be unlike any of the other works Hunter has directed at LSSU.

The themes of technology, human connection, and our place in the world are told through projections and soundscapes.

“We really had some getting inspired with artists like Edward Hopper and lots of film noir,” says Hunter.

Show times are 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, March 27-28, and 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 29.

Tickets - $7 for adults, $5 for seniors and students – are available at the Norris Center box office on campus, by phone at 906/635-2602, online at www.lssu.edu/artscenter, or at the Arts Center box office that opens a half-hour before all performances.

Dead Man's Cell Phone is produced by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc., with funding provided by the Duncan MacLaren Family Fund for the Performing Arts. Some material is intended for mature audiences.

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(PHOTO: Lake Superior State University theater students feel their way through metaphors during a recently dress rehearsal of Dead Man's Cell Phone, a wildly imaginative new comedy by Pulitzer Prize finalist, Sarah Ruhl. Show left to right are Benjamin Bryer (who plays Dwight), Jana Tahtinen (Hermia), Jaclyn Sliger (Mrs. Gottlieb), and Hannah Conner (Jean). Run a web search on “LSSU Arts Center” for ticket information. Photo by Dani Ammel)