Steel Beam director debuts with ‘Crimes of the Heart’
Submitted by Steel Beam Theatre
Director Ann Keen of St. Charles recently made her Steel Beam Theatre directorial debut with the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Crimes of the Heart.”
Performances continue at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 3 p.m. Sundays, through April 22 (except April 8) at the theater, 111 W. Main St. in St. Charles. There is free parking next to the theater, which is wheelchair accessible, and a variety of dining options nearby. Tickets are $25, $23 for students/seniors and $22 for groups of 10 and over. For tickets, visit www.SteelBeamTheatre.com or call (630) 587-8521.
Keen received her bachelor’s degree from Saint Mary’s University and her master’s in acting from Arizona State University. She is founder and an ensemble member of Chicago’s Polarity Ensemble Theatre. At Polarity, Keen has directed “Antigone,” “A Street Car Named Desire,” and “Hamlet,” which earned the company a Chicago Reader’s Best Emerging Theatre Award. As an actor, Keen has appeared in Steel Beam Theatre’s “Rabbit Hole” and “Later Life.” In Chicago, she has played Clytemnestra in “The Oresteia,” Emilia in “Othello,” Lucetta in “Two Gentleman of Verona” and Lady Macbeth.
The cast includes: Maura Clement as Meg, Hilary Holbrook as Babe, and Abigail Trabue as Lenny, all of Chicago; Kathryn Meiners of Bartlett as Chick; Geoff Zimmerman of Chicago as Doc, and Bryan Breau of Chicago as Barnette.
The Magrath sisters have issues with men, and who could blame them, with their father abandoning the family and their mother’s subsequent suicide. The play is an offbeat and comical look at a dysfunctional family forced by present circumstances to relive the hurt and betrayal of past choices. Winner of a Pulitzer Prize and made into a major motion picture, it is a quirky comedy that explores the unresolved tensions and emotions between three very different sisters who reunite at Lenny’s Mississippi home after little sister Babe shoots her senator husband.
“Crimes of the Heart” was American dramatist and writer Beth Henley’s first professional play. It won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the 1981 New York Drama Critics’ Circle award for Best American Play, and earned Henley a Tony award nomination that year.
Visit Steel Beam on Facebook, at www.SteelBeamTheatre.com, or call (630) 587-8521.