theater - The McKendree Review

McKendree Theatre to Perform Night of the Living Dead

25Oct

By Madison RohnNo Comments

Campus Events, Campus News, Entertainment

McKendree Theatre to Perform Night of the Living Dead

By Madison Rohn, Lead Editor Photography by Michelle Magnussen The undead will roam the Hett stage this weekend! McKendree Theatre is performing Night of the Living Dead Live! as their fall play, which will debut this Friday the 25th at 7:30 pm. The play follows six strangers as they try to survive the night in an abandoned farmhouse surrounded by hordes of flesh-eating zombies. The play is a comedic adaptation of the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. The film, directed by George Romero, was one of the first zombie movies and was met with controversy at the time of its release for its realistic horror images, bleak ending and for having a Black protagonist. But since then, the film has become a horror classic and has greatly influenced the zombie genre. The play adaptation a...

We Were Shining: McKendree Theatre Tells Story of Women Who Sued Radium Dial

28Feb

By Madison RohnNo Comments

Arts, Campus Events, Campus News, Community Events, Entertainment

We Were Shining: McKendree Theatre Tells Story of Women Who Sued Radium Dial

By Madison Rohn, Lead Editor Photography by Michelle Magnussen “This isn’t a fairy tale, though it starts like one. It’s not a tragedy, though it ends like one.” This line begins the play These Shining Lives, which McKendree Theatre will perform from February 29th to March 3rd. The play, written by Melanie Marnich, tells the compelling true story of Catherine Wolfe Donohue, one of the thousands of women hired by the Radium Dial Company in Ottawa, Illinois, during the 1920s to paint watch faces with radium. As told in the play, Radium Dial ensured their watch painters that radium was safe, even though the company knew otherwise. After Catherine and her co-workers contracted radium poisoning, they sued the company. Catherine’s eventual legal victory changed worker safety laws in Am...

McKendree Theatre Puts Hilarious Spin on Classic Tale

1Nov

By Madison RohnNo Comments

Arts, Campus Events, Campus News, Entertainment

McKendree Theatre Puts Hilarious Spin on Classic Tale

By Madison Rohn, Lead Editor Photos by Michelle Magnussen McKendree theatre’s fall play, Cinderella Waltz by Don Nigro, is a comedic and insightful retelling of the Cinderella fairy tale that will take the stage this weekend. The play breaks down the archetypes of the original fairy tale and shows them in a new way with plot twists and humor for adults. Cinderella Waltz focuses on Rosey Snow as she tries to make sense of her fairy tale world while putting up with her crazy stepmother, stepsisters, and father. All this happens as she encounters a prince, a troll, a possibly homicidal village idiot, and a fairy godmother who sings sailor songs. Left to right: Mrs. Snow (Marin Jalinsky), Regan (Denaysha Jackson), and Goneril (Madison Rohn) make up Rosey's stepfamily. The cas...

McKendree Theatre Shines Starlight on Untold History

20Mar

By Madison RohnNo Comments

Arts, Campus Events, Campus News, Community Events

McKendree Theatre Shines Starlight on Untold History

McKendree theatre’s spring play, Silent Sky, tells the story of real-life astronomer Henrietta Leavitt. The play, written by Lauren Gunderson, focuses on Henrietta’s time working at Harvard Observatory in the early 1900s as one of their female “computers” – a person who did the math for (mostly male) astronomers – and her efforts to balance her relationships with her quest to understand the universe. Picture of Henrietta Leavitt retrieved from aavso.org. As the play highlights, in real life, Henrietta discovered over 2,000 Cepheid variable stars, which are stars that go through periods of brightness and dimness. Her biggest achievement was the discovery of how to calculate Cepheid stars’ distance based on their brightness cycles.1 This discovery made it possible to determine how far...