The Lake Travis High School (LTHS) Theatre Arts Department will present two plays this fall, Pride and Prejudice, based on the novel by Jane Austen (adapted by Helen Jerome), and Six Characters in Search of an Author, by Luigi Pirandello (translated by Eric Bentley).
Pride and Prejudice will be presented at 7 p.m., Friday, Oct. 23 and Saturday, Oct. 24 in the concert hall of the LTHS Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $10 for adults and $8 for students and seniors and will be available at the door starting at 6:15 p.m.
“The play takes place approximately in the year 1811, in the English countryside of London,” said LTHS Theater Arts Department Director Tammy Carville. “This was a time when England was at the height of its power. Mrs. Bennet is determined to get her daughters-Jane, Elizabeth, and Lydia-married. The trio is likely ‘looking girls’ in a period when a woman’s one possible career is matrimony. To be a wife was considered to be successful, and anything else was failure. Jane and her Mr. Bingley and Lydia with her Mr. Wickham are quite content with things as they are, but not Elizabeth. She actually refuses to marry Mr. Collins, whom she openly deplores, and Mr. Darcy, whom she secretly adores. The play is the story of the duel between Elizabeth and her pride and Mr. Darcy and his prejudice.”
Each gives in, and pride and prejudice meet halfway, added Carville.
Additionally, Six Characters in Search of an Author will be presented at 7 p.m., Friday, December 4 and Saturday, December 5 in the school’s black box theatre. Tickets are $10 for adults and $8 for students and seniors and will be available at the door starting at 6:15 p.m.
“This show was a theatrical milestone in its time and winner of the Nobel Prize in 1934,” continued Carville. “The play begins with a troupe of actors rehearsing a play when six ‘characters’ enter the theatre who seem to embody a different play. They insist on acting out their story. They express that their author created them, but never finished their story. Throughout the production, the audience experiences the difficulty of distinguishing between reality and illusion which constitutes Pirandello’s theme. The actual company of actors, in many ways, speaks for the audience. The characters plead with the acting troupe director and his actors to stage their life story so that it can be completed. The audience is confronted with the frustrating collision of reality and illusion as it explores the fundamentally absurd and tragic nature of the human condition. This play originally took place in 1921. We will perform it as if it were taking place in present day.”
For more information about these productions or the LTHS Theater Arts Department, contact Carville at 533-6180.