Production Studies III Showcase, "The Waiting Room"

The University of Richmond Department of Theatre and Dance presents the annual Production Studies III Showcase Thursday, February 14-Saturday, February 16 at 7:30pm and Sunday, February 17 at 2pm in Cousins Studio Theatre. The performance is free but tickets are required and are available here. This year's production is The Waiting Room. Associate Professor of Theatre and Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance, Dorthy Holland, offers a preview of the performance:
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Remember the last time that you were in a doctor’s waiting room?  Or a hospital waiting room?  What was it like? Interminably dull? Mind-numbing? Soul-draining?  Not so in this Waiting Room!  Here, you will encounter a charming Chinese woman from the 18^th century who is having trouble with her bound foot. You will also see an elegant woman from the 19^th century who is looking for medical help to cure her “hysteria.”  And then there is the out-spoken Wanda, a 20^th century woman whose latest breast implant surgery did not go exactly according to plan.  But not everyone in and around the waiting room is suffering from some physical ailment. There are charismatic drug company executives who are visionaries striving to find the cure for cancer, altruistic and inspirational doctors, feisty nurses who dispense philosophical insights along with patient care, and eager bureaucrats doing their diligent best to help make this all work.  This is most fantastical and exciting waiting room, a place where dreams and hopes and aspiration tangle in a very moving and provocative comic drama. With an emphasis on the comic.  And the fantastical.   And the real.  Oddly, all are intimately related in this play, an artful and beautifully-designed production.

What is equally exciting about this production is that the Director, Lighting Designer, Set Designer, Costume Designer, and the whole creative team are all students.  Senior Mary McDonnell, a double business administration and theatre arts major, is the Director; senior Heather Dunlap, a double physics and theatre arts major, is the Lighting Designer; junior Maggie McGrann, a double theatre arts and English major, is the Costume Designer; junior Kathryn Cohen, a theatre arts major and business administration minor, is the Set Designer; and senior DeShawn Holmes, a theatre arts major, is the Sound Designer.  Senior Hannah Rhodes, a leadership studies and theatre arts double major, served as Dramaturg and Props Master for the production; senior Bryce Carson, an interdisciplinary studies major, served as PR and Business Manager, and senior Barbara Vaughan is the Production Stage Manager. 

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Dorothy Holland is associate professor of theatre and associate professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies. Dr. Holland is also chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance, where she teaches a range of courses: Production Studies, Theatre History, 20th-century Acting Styles and Theories, Physical Theatre, Staging Gender, Musical Theatre, and the First Year Seminar.  Her research explores the intersections of performance theory, feminist theory, and contemporary theatre practice. 

Holland has been a professional actor and director for over 30 years; she has performed leading roles on Broadway, Off-Broadway, in national tours, and in regional theatres throughout the country.  Since she came to the University of Richmond in 1999, Holland has directed a variety of main-stage productions: All My Sons (Arthur Miller), How I Learned to Drive (Paula Vogel), Mother Courage and Her Children (Brecht), Company (Sondheim), Gypsy (starring Lorna Luft), The Furies (Aeschylus), Amadeus (Peter Shaffer), Small Tragedy (Craig Lucas), Fiddler on the Roof, The Skin of Our Teeth (Thornton Wilder), The Madwoman of Chaillot (Giraudoux), and Rent (Jonathan Larson). She has also performed leading roles in several local productions: Prospero in The Tempest,  Emily Stilson in Arthur Kopit's Wings, Evelyn in Tales of the Lost Formicans, and the Catwoman in By the Bog of Cats  -- all directed by Walter Schoen.  She was also the Old Woman in Ionesco’s The Chairs, directed by Paolo Emilio Landi, appeared in The Laramie Project for Barksdale Theatre, was Vada Love Powell in The Exact Center of the Universe and Susan Strasberg in the premier of Alex Finlayson's Misfits, also for Barksdale Theatre.