Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to take the stage April 16

"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" will run Thursday through Saturday, April 16-18, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, April 19, at 2 p.m. in the Memorial Hall auditorium. The play is being billed as "Rated R" because of strong language.

The set is being assembled under the supervision of Clint Wright, technical director and lighting designer, and Scott Cavin, set designer. Shelby Wilson, a CSC senior from Benkelman, is overseeing the preparation of costumes, make-up and wigs. The play is being directed by Roger Mays, who is overseeing rehearsals in the Black Box Theatre.

Mays said Cavin is using a style called "selected realism" to create a "convincing-yet- ephemeral" Southern mansion where the play's central characters, members of the Pollitt family, reside. Wilson is implementing hair and clothing styles from the 1950s to capture the time and place of the family's struggle over the multi-million dollar estate.

The cast has been honing Southern accents while developing family relationships and capturing the vivid characters that Williams created, Mays said.

Made famous by the film featuring Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, and Burl Ives, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" was hailed by the New York Times as "delicately wrought exercise in human communication ... limpid and effortless ... As theatre, it is superb."

The characters of the drama are Rhett Breedlove of Torrington, Wyo., as Brick, Erika DeBoer of Morrill as his wife, Maggie, Shalee Jones of Minatare as Big Mama, Colton Neidhardt of Crawford as Big Daddy, Mason Quinn of Cheyenne, Wyo., as Gooper, HeatherAnn Hicks of Brigham City, Utah, as his wife, Mae, Jimmy Kwangwari of Zimbabwe as the Pollitt's servant, Lacey, Chris Gibson of Denver as Doctor Baugh, Shannon Smay of Sidney as Reverend Tooker, and Amber Nightingale of Morrill as Dixie.

Tickets are available by calling the CSC Box Office at 308-432-6360 Monday-Friday from 2-6 p.m.