'The Play About the Baby' explores pain and its role in life

The Feb. 13-16 performances each begin at 7:30 p.m. The Feb. 16 matinee is at 2 p.m. All performances are in the Black Box Theatre. Adult themes and language. Contact the Box Office for tickets at 308-432-6207 or boxoffice@csc.edu.

Scott Cavin, Chadron State College theater faculty member and director of the play, said, "Pain is not optional. It is part of the script - of life. This is not your mother’s play. It is something different.”

He feels that playwright Edward Albee’s message is, in part, “Life’s experiences can either make you stronger or break you."

See interviews with the actors in "Behind the Scenes" online.

The four-person cast includes Willis Miller of Deer Trail, Colo. as Man, Derek Phelps of Sidney, Neb. as Boy, Hannah Clark of Littleton, Colo. as Woman and Ashley Rushman of Rushville, Neb. as Girl.

Albee won Pulitzer prizes for three of his other plays, “Three Tall Women,” “A Delicate Balance” and “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

In a 1998 London review of the play, Nina Planck wrote, “There is plenty of fear and pain for the young couple. Man and Woman conspire to undermine Boy and Girl, to drive them mad with grief and then mad with doubt.”

When the manipulation increases, Boy begs for compassion, "I can take pain and loss and all the rest--later. But now we're happy….”

Cavin said, about theater in general, “It cannot compete with the sound effects and special effects of media or electronic entertainment. It is intimate, low tech and there is a trend now to make a point about this difference. Theater is involved in personal storytelling.”