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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...

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

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...