Ithaca College

The On the Verge playreading series presents a reading of Tom Stoppard's "dazzling dissection of adultery, the theatre, radical politics and other so-called real things" (Linda Winer, Newsday). The reading was directed by Claire Gleitman, a faculty member in the English department, and the cast will include faculty members from both Theatre and English (Kathleen Mulligan and Chris Holmes), students from the departments of Theatre and English (Taylor Misiak, Jordan Schultz, Katy Newton, and Caleb Cushing), and a local professional actor (Jesse Bush).

The Real Thing is a hilarious and also deeply serious play about love and infidelity, about intellectual and political integrity, and about language and art. The play begins with a man building a house of cards; that house of cards becomes a metaphor for the frailty of human relationships and the dizzying challenges we encounter when we attempt to distinguish the real thing from the fraudulent--in life, politics and art. How are we to know when our love relationships are real, and do they become unreal when they unravel? Is there such a thing as "the right words in the right order," or are our aesthetic judgments, like our emotional and moral ones, merely arbitrary, capricious, a product of the moment in which we live and the place where we happen to be standing? These are among the many matters that Stoppard explores in a play characterized by verbal acrobatics, humorous intellectual sparring matches, and a tender emotional core.

Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact Claire Gleitman at gleitman@ithaca.edu or (607) 274-3893. We ask that requests for accommodations be made as soon as possible.