FIU’s Summer Alternative Theatre Festival kicks off June 21

Southampton University alumni Robyn Lindsay and Thomas Jancis portray Rita and Professor Frank Bryant in "Educating Rita."

FIU’s Summer Alternative Theatre Festival will kick off its fifth season Tuesday, June 21, and run through the end of July at Modesto A. Maidique Campus.

Directed by FIU Theatre professors Phillip M. Church and Marina Pareja, the festival showcases FIU Theatre students’ artistic talents and the department’s diversity in each of this season’s courageous, witty and provocative productions, which this season include stagings of Oleanna and Die! Mommy! Die!, among others.

The Southampton Solent University production of Educating Rita will travel from across the pond to kick off the festival. This is the first time since its inception that the festival is hosting an overseas production.

The comedy, written by Willy Russell and directed by Ben Hawkins, follows a year-long relationship between a working-class hairdresser seeking inner growth and a tradition-bound professor facing a mid-life crisis.

The season’s second production, David Mamet’s Oleanna, will be directed by Edward G. Excalibur. The play carves out an intense exploration of academic politics by offering a rare introspective look at the hows and whys of learning.

The third production, directed by Jeannette Galup, will give audiences a funny depiction of the non-traditional family depicted in Paula Voguel’s And Baby Makes Seven, a story about a lesbian couple expecting their first child with the live-in gay father.

The final production, Die! Mommie Die!, is a comic melodrama about a faded pop singer, her resentful children and dead husband. The comedy was written by Charles Bausch and is directed for the festival by Marina Pareja.

New in 2011

A new addition to the festival this year is Sound & Stage.

An evening of original theatre plays co-existing with screenplays designed to give the audience a chance to experience theatre and film side-by-side, as they watch various short plays and short films in alternating presentations.

Popcorn and soda are included in the Sound & Stage ticket price.

Summer Alternative Theatre Festival

When/Where: Educating Rita and Oleanna will play on alternating evenings June 21-June 25 at 8 p.m. and June 26 at 5 p.m.

And Baby Makes Seven will show July 4-July 9 at 8 p.m. and July 10 at 5 p.m.

Die! Mommy! Die! will play July 21-July 23 and July 28-July 30 at 8 p.m., and July 24 and July 31 at 5 p.m.

Sound & Stage takes place on July 17 at 7 p.m.

All events take place at FIU’s Studio Theatre in DM 150 at Modesto A. Maidique Campus.

Admission: General admission $10, $8 for FIU students and faculty/staff.

To purchase tickets or for more information, call 305-348-0496.