Ithaca College

Subscriptions to the 2009-10 theater season include tickets to five productions and are available for as little as $25. Call 607-274-3224 to inquire about subscribing or for tickets to any of our productions. Help celebrate the new Dillingham Center and enjoy terrific theater!

Built in 1969, Ithaca College's Dillingham Center will undergo a major renovation project this summer that will ultimately benefit students and patrons alike. The new Dillingham will feature a refurbished lobby, elevators, updated classrooms and studios, and a new rehearsal space the size of the Hoerner Theatre stage.

The first production in the newly renovated building will be British playwright Caryl Churchill's Top Girls. The play opens with a dinner party being thrown by Marlene, who is celebrating her promotion at the Top Girls employment agency. She invites Pope Joan, Dull Gret from Pieter Breughel's painting, 19th-century explorer Isabella Bird, and other characters from history and art to swap stories about surviving in a man's world. As we move through Marlene's tangled career and family lives, we see that she has learned to be tough and insensitive in order to compete with men.

Inspired by the Book of Genesis, the fall musical, Children of Eden, uses Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and Noah and the flood to shed new light on universal stories of love, hope, parents, and children. Composer Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Godspell) brings musical life to familiar characters as they struggle to raise families and do what's right in a complex and conflicted world.

Next, we will surprise you with a great production featuring our talented student performers and designers. This production is not included in season subscription packages.

The annual collaboration between the Department of Theatre Arts and the School of Music will be a production of Oscar-winning composer Rachel Portman's The Little Prince: A Magical Opera. This popular opera is based on the beloved 1943 book by Antoine de Saint Exupery and the tiny explorer from Astroid B612. Children will enjoy this production but adults will never forget the message summarized by the fox, "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

The spring musical, Floyd Collins is based on a true story and takes us to rural Kentucky in 1925, where a local cave explorer seeks to fulfill his dream of discovering a tourist attraction. When he becomes trapped in "Sand Cave" and a rescue is attempted, Floyd and his community are catapulted into the public eye as a nationwide media circus descends. Composer/lyricist Adam Guettel merges musical theater style with folk and bluegrass, contrasting the unadorned lives of the Collins family with the brash intrusion of the world that suddenly envelops them.

Shakespeare invented the genre of screwball comedy (complete with witty lovers who cannot live with or without each other), and the season's final production, Much Ado about Nothing, is filled with some of his most memorable comic characters. As the wedding of Hero and Claudio approaches, Beatrice and Benedick are maneuvered into thinking that each loves the other. Complications arise when Don Pedro's evil brother convinces the groom that the bride has been unfaithful. The lovers eventually unite in this play about eavesdropping, deception, and forgiveness.