Displaying items by tag: Jeannie Affelder

In a departure to their oft musical-driven productions, Theater at the Center kicks of the 2018 season with the comedy-drama Steel Magnolias, Robert Harling’s 1987 play that became a blockbuster film directed by Herbert Ross just two years later.

Set in the deep South, in a northwestern Louisiana town, the play revolves around the bond between a handful of small-town women that frequent a local beauty salon, Truvy’s, whose owner is of the same name. Based on the premature death of Harling’s own sister caused by diabetes, the play’s character’s strength is tested as they struggle with the imminent and eventual loss of one of their own.

Run by Truvy Jones, Truvy’s Salon is seemingly the gossip hub of the town. Regulars such as the gleeful widow of the town’s former mayor, Clairee Belcherand, and Louisa "Ouiser" Boudreaux, the irritable and sardonic neighbor, often pop by whether getting their hair serviced or not – just to hear, or pass on, the latest. M’Lynn Eatenton and her daughter Shelby are also staples in the shop, Shelby now getting ready for her wedding day. At first it seems we are thrust into light-hearted beauty salon talk. Truvy loves to listen as much as she loves to dish out advice. Even though it mainly consists of neighborhood small talk, the dialogue is so rich and humorous, we can’t help but get pulled in. Quickly the characters become charming in their own ways; each personality so well-crafted in just the first scene. Minutes into the play, we feel we know them.

It’s Annelle Dupuy’s first day and she’s got a lot to take in.

Lighthearted soon goes to serious at the drop of a hat when Shelby falls into a hypoglycemic state while sitting in a salon chair. M’Lynn rushes to her aid with a juice box forcing her to drink the sugary liquid. From there theatre goers are on notice to proceed with caution – tear jerker coming.

As the story progresses, Truvy begins to look at Annelle as the daughter she never had, something they each so desperately seem to need. We watch Annelle grow from timid employee to becoming a confident woman. At the same time, an impending doom looms over the story concerning Shelby’s condition, especially when she announces she is pregnant – something doctors warned her against due to the strain it would cause on her body. Though greeted with a series of “congratulations” by each of the women, M’Lynn does not share the enthusiasm, knowing the risks that would be involved.

Linda Fortunato directs this production as smoothly as a gentle southern breeze that brushes against a Weeping Willow. The exceptionally well-acted play is really cut into four scenes, each one as engaging as its colorful characters. Theater at the Center favorite Cory Goodrich returns as M’Lynn Eatenton and powers her way through the complicated role displaying a much-needed warmth, concern and love for her daughter. Shelby is wonderfully played by actress Landree Flemming. We immediately connect with her, which makes us relate to her mother even more so. Heidi Kettenring successfully turns on the southern charm as Truvy and is extremely likeable in the role as the salon’s queen bee.

The cast is superb – all players adding just the right amount of personality to each character. Myesha-Tiara is finely-cast as Annelle, while veteran performers Joslyn Yvonne Jones as “Ouiser” and Jeannie Affelder as Clairee add the final touches that makes this such a powerhouse cast.

The three-quarters theatre-in-the-round staging give us an up close and personal peek into the well-constructed set that consists of Truvy’s in-home beauty salon complete with all the works, mists of hairspray and all.

Women as strong as steel yet as fragile as the magnolia flower, the title suggests we can all be broken yet each one of us has the inner strength to prevail no matter how bleak a situation might seem, even if some of that strength is on loan to us by a friend.

Highly recommended.

Steel Magnolias is being performed at Theater at the Center in Munster, Indiana through March 25th. For tickets and/or more show information visit www.TheaterAtTheCenter.com.

*Tissues are offered by ushers upon exit.

Some of us are born with a passion, a passion for music or art or math. In the case of First Folio’s Silent Sky, one woman gives up almost everything in her personal life because she senses furiously, in her heart, that HER passion is going to lead to a discovery that will help all of humankind. This special woman, Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868–1921), turns out be absolutely correct. 

Like the popular film "Hidden Figures", the 2011 play Silent Sky by playwright Lauren Gunderson, now making it's Chicago Premiere, tells a very important real life example of how women have been making significant contributions to Science and the Arts against almost impossible odds due to sexism in the work place. Leavitt is wonderfully played with a great zesty and nerdy enthusiasm by Cassandra Bissell who adds just the right amount of seditious touch to the headstrong and very determined character. She is one of the women termed "computers" by their male employers who has been given the great "honor" of painstakingly cataloging all the stars in the sky captured on glass plates by a telescope. As a new employee, she is never allowed to operate the high-powered telescope or use privately her own ideas to validate her own discoveries while earning a whopping $.25 an hour. 

Leavitt is a proud, brilliant Radcliffe graduate. She jokes with her male supervisor Peter Shaw (keenly played by Wardell Julius Clark) that she and he are in fact "colleagues" that "Radcliffe is basically Harvard in skirts." As they fall in love with each other, he begins to soften on some of his more sexist behaviors including "borrowing" ideas from Leavitt to give to the professor (to whom she will never directly report) her discoveries by trying to claim them as his own. Leavitt is hired as one of Harvard astronomer Dr. Edward Charles Pickering's "computers" or, as they were referred to as "Pickering's Harem”.

Leavitt's work came at a time when we as earthlings had no idea where we were located in the Milky Way nor did we know how far away the billions of stars and galaxies made visible by the super powerful new telescope really are from our planet. Leavitt observes closely the luminosity of a class of stars known as Cepheid variables. Others had thought their flashes of light completely random, but through years of study and an epiphany provided by her musically inclined sister, Margaret (Haley Rice), who is composing a symphony in between giving birth to multiple children, Leavitt discovers that the stars are actually making sounds, a music of the stars. This eventually provided the ONLY key to measuring the distance between Earth and other galaxies. Creating the standard to measure the distance of stars from Earth, many male astronomers like Edwin Hubble greedily feasted on her published work to make names for themselves but poor Henrietta dies of cancer before one of them finally realizes she deserves to be nominated for, and win, the Nobel Prize - but the Nobel is not given posthumously and so she was never even nominated for it. 

Annie Cannon (Jeannie Affelder) and Willamina Fleming (Belinda Bremner) play her fellow "computers" with a lusty, strong intelligence. The three characters develop a genuine family, a sisterhood, believing in Henrietta and encouraging her to take her work home with her (the glass plates are not allowed to leave the observatory) even when she is forced to move home to Wisconsin to take care of her dying father. 

In the end, Henrietta gives up a promising offer of marriage to Shaw, the chance to have children of her own, and even her dream of traveling the world in order to complete her work. 

Although I thought the gray monotone set in the chapel at Mayslake Peabody Estate was awfully depressing and didn't change enough to give us the sense of her whole life passing through it's dull indistinguishable doors, we are finally rewarded with the lighting display and music at the end of the show thanks to John "Smooch" Medina's projections, combined with Michael McNamara's lights and Christopher Kriz's musical score. The entire effect was spectacular, almost as if we are finally able to see the universe through Henrietta's passionate, intelligent eyes.   

There really needs to be more biographical plays like this one written with respect and sympathy about women who have changed our place in the world for the better - forever. It is a terrible waste of human intelligence and a dirty shame that if you mention the name Henrietta Swan Leavitt to anyone girl child or even adult today that her life will ring no bells, her name strike no sense of recognition, gratefulness ignored for the contributions she made and the doors she broke down for female scientists to come. 

Touching, beautiful and inspiring.

I highly recommend this thoughtful, poetic and understanding production for showing that some women will give up everything for the love of their work and dedication to humanity. Remembering theses outstanding individuals inspires and empowers us all, male or female, to chase our dreams to the end. 

Superbly directed by Melanie Keller, Silent Sky is being performed at Mayslake Peabody Estate in Oakbrook through April 30th. For more information on this wonderful show or to purchase tickets, click here.