BAAC expands season to summer

Next year's season at the Bloomington Area Arts Council will not stop at the end of IU's spring semester. At a press conference Wednesday, the BAAC announced plans to continue productions at the John Waldron Arts Center, 122 S. Walnut St., through July.\n"People keep asking why our house is dark in the summer, and now we will be answering their request by expanding our season," said Kaira Hogle, BAAC performance director.\nThe upcoming season offers a wide variety of performances from interpretative movement theater in "Waves: A Theatrical Adaptation of the Novel by Virginia Woolf" to traditional musical theater in Berold Brecht and Kurt Weil's "The Threepenny Opera" to the classical guitar stylings of Ana Vidovic, Antanas Tzetkov and the Bloomington Classical Guitar Society.\nHogle said one of the highlights of the season will be the April production of Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia," a play that juxtaposes members of a 19th-century family in one room of their house with their modern-day descendants in the same room. Stoppard's play contrasts past events with modern times to examine recurrences in history.\n"It's one of the one's that people go -- 'Oh! You're doing "Arcadia?" Oh my God!'" Hogle said.\nTerence Hartnett of Detour Theatre Company will be directing two plays this season -- "The Threepenny Opera" and Paula Vogel's postmodern adaptation of Shakespeare's "Othello," "Desdemona: A Play about a Handkerchief," in which neither Othello nor Iago appear. Hartnett praised the BAAC's help in supporting quality productions in Bloomington.\n"There are only two kinds of theater in my mind -- good and bad," Hartnett said. \nHe explained how Broadway has produced some really bad plays in the past despite expectations.\n"Great theater can happen anywhere," he said, crediting Bloomington for producing star-quality productions in the past in part because of the BAAC's work.\nA local playwright will get his chance to shine in January with the production of "Julie D." Mike Smith, a Bloomington playwright, recently had his play performed off-Broadway in New York City. The play, described by Hogle to be artistically dark, features a creative writing instructor with long-term writer's block. To get herself writing again, the professor turns to alcohol for a motivational muse.\nHogle said a highlight of the season will come in July with Julian Livingston's "Twist of Treason," a modern opera exploring the life of of notorious American traitor Benedict Arnold and his relationship with his wife Peggy Shippen, a Philadelphia debutante. Livingston will be the musical director of this production, which was first performed in 1976.\n"I was surprised when I heard they wanted to do it," Livingston said. "Most modern operas don't get another performance. I think the thing that caused this to be accepted more is that it's kind of melodic and eclectic."\n-- Contact Arts editor Jenica Schultz at jwschult@indiana.edu.