College Theatre Presents 'The Frogs' April 7 to 17
College Theatre at College of DuPage presents Aristophanes' comedy “The Frogs” Thursday, April 7, to Sunday, April 17, in Theatre 2 of the McAninch Arts Center as the Glen Ellyn campus, 425 Fawell Blvd.
Performances are 8 p.m. Thursdays to Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays. A preview performance will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 7.
Directed by part-time faculty member Doug Long, this well-known work by Aristophanes was first produced in 405 B.C. Dionysus travels to Hades with his slave Xanthias in a quest to prove no living tragedians are worthy. It's a journey fraught with comedy, illustrating the follies of both men and gods.
“There aren't too many productions of Greek comedies,” Long said. ”I'd relate them more to Jon Stewart or Saturday Night Live in terms of satirizing current affairs. Our approach with this production is to point out those similarities.”
The original play is heavy with the events of the time. The Athenians were at the end of the Peloponnesian War and Greek life was irrevocably altered, he said. To make the piece easily digestible, Long made the decision to cut dialogue relying too heavily on a knowledge of Greek history, choosing instead to draw audience members into the core story.
“The entire work is heavy on verse and the students have been great working through that the dialogue,” Long said of rehearsals. “We spent just the first week and a half working on going through verse, learning the meaning and conveying that to the audience.”
A pre-show discussion is scheduled for 6:45 p.m. Thursday, April 7. A post-show discussion with cast, crew and designers is scheduled for Friday, April 15.
Tickets to “The Frogs” are $12 for adults and $11 for seniors, College of DuPage students and youth. Tickets to the April 7 preview are $9.
For more information, call the MAC Ticket Office at (630) 942-4000, or visit: www.atthemac.org.