Theatre and Dance presents Mauritius
The Lamar University Department of Theatre and Dance presents “Mauritius” by acclaimed playwright Theresa Rebeck, directed by guest director Carolyn Johnson, October 5, 6, and 7 at 7:30 p.m. and October 8 at 2 p.m. in the Studio Theatre.
General admission tickets are $15. LU/LIT faculty and staff, senior citizens and non-LU student tickets are $10. LU/LIT students with a valid ID may purchase tickets for $7 (limit one student ticket per ID). Tickets may also be reserved by phone at (409) 880-2250. The box office accepts cash, checks, and all major credit/debit cards.
About the play
MAURITIUS – Stamp collecting is far more risky than you think. After their mother’s death, two estranged half-sisters discover a book of rare stamps that may include the crown jewel for collectors. One sister tries to collect on the windfall, while the other resists for sentimental reasons. In this gripping tale, a seemingly simple sale becomes dangerous when three seedy, high-stakes collectors enter the sisters’ world, willing to do anything to claim the rare find as their own.
Mauritius was originally produced at Boston’s Huntington Theatre, where it received the 2007 IRNE Award for Best New Play as well as the Eliot Norton Award.
About the director
Guest director Carolyn Johnson is an Equity actress, singer, director and dialect and acting coach with more than 25 years of professional experience. She has directed for professional and academic productions; most recently, Panto Wonderful Wizard for Stages Repertory Theatre (Houston Press Best Musical Nomination), and has performed with numerous theatres in Houston, Prague, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. Recent roles include Romeo & Juliet for Prague Shakespeare Company (Lady Capulet), Trevor for Catastrophic Theatre (Sandra), and Luna Gale for Stages Repertory Theatre (Caroline), for which she won the 2017 Houston Press Best Actress Award.
In Chicago, Johnson was a company member of Noble Fool Theatre and co-artistic director of Bugeater Theatre. She has been the dialect and vocal coach on productions for Houston Grand Opera, Prague Shakespeare Co., Stages Repertory Theatre, Ensemble Theatre, Main Street Theater, Texas Repertory Theatre and Unity Theatre, among others. She also privately teaches/coaches accents and acting, and works with the online accent resource, AccentHelp.com. She received her B.F.A. in acting from The University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
About the playwright
Theresa Rebeck is a widely produced playwright throughout the United States and abroad. New York productions of her work include Dead Accounts at the Music Box Theatre; Seminar at the Golden Theatre; Mauritius at the Biltmore Theatre in a Manhattan Theater Club Production; The Scene, The Water’s Edge, Loose Knit, The Family of Mann and Spike Heels at Second Stage; Bad Dates, The Butterfly Collection and Our House at Playwrights Horizons; The Understudy at the Laura Pels Theater in a Roundabout Theatre Company production; and View of the Dome at New York Theatre Workshop. Omnium Gatherum (co-written, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2003) was featured at the Humana Festival, and had a commercial run at the Variety Arts Theatre. Her newest work, Poor Behavior premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 2011. Dead Accounts, commissioned by the Cincinnati Playhouse, premiered January 2012. Seminar continues to run on Broadway.
All of Rebeck’s past produced plays are published by Smith and Kraus as Theresa Rebeck: Complete Plays, Volumes I, II III, and IV and in acting editions available from Samuel French or Playscripts. Rebeck’s other publications are Free Fire Zone, a book of comedic essays about writing and show business. She has written for American Theatre Magazine and has had excerpts of her plays published in the Harvard Review. Her first novel, Three Girls and Their Brother, was published by Random House/Shaye Areheart Books in April 2008. Her second novel, Twelve Rooms With A View, was published by Random House/Shaye Areheart Books in May of 2010. Both novels are available online and at booksellers everywhere.
In television, she has written for Dream On, Brooklyn Bridge, L.A. Law, American Dreamer, Maximum Bob, First Wave, and Third Watch. She was the creator of the NBC drama Smash. She has been a writer/producer for Canterbury’s Law, Smith, Law and Order:Criminal Intent and NYPD Blue. Her produced feature films include Harriet the Spy, Gossip, and the independent features Sunday on the Rocks and Seducing Charlie Barker, an adaptation of her play, The Scene.
Rebeck’s awards include the Mystery Writer’s of America’s Edgar Award, the Writer’s Guild of America award for Episodic Drama, the Hispanic Images Imagen Award, and the Peabody, all for her work on NYPD Blue. She has won the National Theatre Conference Award (for The Family of Mann), and was awarded the William Inge New Voices Playwriting Award in 2003 for The Bells. Other awards include the PEN/Laura Pels Foundation Award, the Athena Film Festival Award, an Alex Award, a Lilly Award and in 2011 she was named one of the 150 Fearless Women in the World by Newsweek.
Rebeck is originally from Cincinnati and holds an MFA in Playwrighting and a Ph.D. in Victorian Melodrama, both from Brandeis University. She is a board member of the Dramatists Guild, a contributing editor to the Harvard Review, an associate artist of the Roundabout Theatre Company, a playwright adviser and board member of the LARK and has taught at Brandeis University and Columbia University. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.
