Contact:  Rick Peterson, Manager of News Services, 414/832-6590
For Immediate Release					November 6, 1996
 
Lawrence University Theatre Presents Tony Kushner's "A Bright Room Called Day"
 
	
APPLETON, WIS. -  A penchant for pushing the theatrical envelope is a hallmark
of theatre at Lawrence University.  Often controversial and thought-provoking,
off-beat, slightly obscure plays have long been at the heart of the eclectic
mix of productions Lawrence has staged.  Challenging area theatre-goers to
venture outside the friendly confines of mainstream America drama with such
plays as "Top Girls," "Dark Ride" or "Cellophane Xerox" is exactly the way Fred
Gaines likes it.

"What we do is bring our students up to speed," said Gaines, professor of
theatre-drama at Lawrence.  "We're doing plays that were written today and that
the students will be dealing with out in the real world tomorrow.  We're
committed to doing modern plays at Lawrence because we want to expose students
to the artists of their generation." 

The latest version of that philosophy at work is the production of Pulitzer
Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright Tony Kushner's 1985, "A Bright Room
Called Day."  Three performances of the play will be staged Nov. 21-23 at 8
p.m. in Stansbury Theatre in the Lawrence Music-Drama Center.   

A dramatic history lesson that borders on dark comedy, "A Bright Room Called
Day" is centered around a Berlin apartment in the early 1930s, where a handful
of liberal-minded friends -- an actress, a cameraman, a graphic artist, a
homosexual -- try ineffectually to oppose the growing wave of Nazism.  Hitler's
rise to power eventually force the friends to abandon their hopes of making a
difference and flee into hiding until only one woman, Agnes, is left cowering
in the apartment. 

The story also takes place concurrently in 1990 in the same apartment, where a
Jewish, American graduate student, Zillah Katz, is visiting Berlin, looking to
escape the sleepiness of the Reagan era and find some of the grit and
profundity of the past.  Through Zillah's direct addresses to the audience,
Kusher tries to draw historical analogies between reactionary Germany and
modern-day American ills he sees produced by the administrations of presidents
Reagan and Bush.

"The last decade was too hard for a history junkie like myself -- the decade of
the Great Communicator," Zillah tells her new German friend.  "Your Great
Communicator spoke and created a whole false history; ours spoke and history
basically came down with arteriosclerosis; from the Triumph of the Will to the
Triumph of the Brain Dead; from National Socialism to National Senility." 

"We have an obligation to the community at-large to do plays that deal with the
issues of the day, whether that's political in the broad sense or political in
the narrow sense," said Gaines, who is directing the play.  "And that's what
we're doing with this production." 	

Sophomore Jessie Gonior portrays Agnes, the German actress who refuses to leave
the apartment -- "I've got a great lease," she says -- and join her friends in
exile.  Senior Mary McNamara plays the American woman Zillah.

Tickets for "A Bright Room Called Day" at $8 for adults, $4 for students, are
available at the Lawrence Box Office, Brokaw Hall, 115 S. Drew St., Appleton,
12:30-5:30 p.m., Monday-Saturday.  For more information, or to  charge tickets
to Visa/Mastercard, call 414/832-6749.