PROFESSOR AND LOCAL ACTOR TAKE ON AN EXISTENTIAL PLAY ABOUT ART—
Dr. Mark Ferguson, chair of the Theatre Department, is directing the first play of the academic year, a two-man show featuring another Wofford professor, Dan Day and local actor Tim Giles. The play is titled Red and is about the famed abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko, who is teaching his assistant the meaning of art and helping him understand the nature of human existence. This 90-minute drama is a winner of six Tony Awards.
Ferguson is excited about this upcoming play because it is unlike anything they have ever produced.
“Having a faculty member and a local professional perform in Red is a great opportunity for our majors for three reasons. The first is that Dan is able to demonstrate to his students in a very concrete way the kind of focus, discipline, intensity and passion that acting at the highest level requires. I am confident that the students and the entire community will find his work on stage instructive and inspiring,”says Ferguson.
“The second reason is that these students are able to participate on the production side of this show in a way that is usually impossible for those of our students who are always focused on acting.
All of the majors are working back stage, on the design team assisting Professor Colleen Ballance, or otherwise behind the scenes on this show and are gaining essential knowledge about lights, props, costumes and sound. They’ve all acted before and will all certainly act again, but in this case, with that pressure removed, they can focus on other equally important aspects and elements of production,” says Ferguson.
Finally, Ferguson argues that theatre is often at its most powerful when it engages with the issues its audiences are facing.
“Wofford’s 2014 Strategic Planning process yielded, among other things, a strong interest in building the arts programs at the college. Red, with it’s powerful message about the importance of art, the role of the artist in society, and what art can and should do, seemed to us particularly germane to the conversations that are happening on this campus. Doing right now is particularly timely,” says Ferguson, a 1994 graduate of Wofford.
Some people may not know that Day was a professional actor for 15 years prior to coming to Wofford. He also founded and ran his own theatre company in Dallas, called Kitche Dog. Giles has studied at Rutgers and in London and has a lot of experience in acting. I attended a rehearsal of Red and must forewarn that in the play one of the characters smokes actual cigarettes and there is a lot of foul language.
Like all of the other plays the theater department puts on throughout the year, tickets are $5 for students and $12 for adults. Opening night was Oct. 7 at 7 p.m. in the Tony White Theater. The play will be open at the same hour tonight, Oct. 14, and will conclude tomorrow, Oct. 15.
“It is a privilege to make art with these actors and students. I hope that the Wofford community takes advantage of this opportunity,” says Ferguson
