The Collegiate Players present Book of Days by Lanford Wilson, at the Oates Theater in the Hershey Center for the Arts on April 6,7, and 8, 2017 at 7:30.
Taking its cues from Thorton Wilder's Our Town, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson’s Book of Days, examines the lives of a tight-knit small-town community forced to reconsider their values, their faith and the world they thought they knew after an unexpected tragedy occurs. Dublin, Missouri is dominated by four institutions: a community college, a fundamentalist church, a cheese plant and a community theater. When a guest director hired by the community theater casts the plant's bookkeeper Ruth Hoch as Joan of Arc in a production of George Bernard Shaw's St. Joan, he inadvertently sets off a series of events that changes the town forever. And after the owner of the plant dies mysteriously in a hunting accident, Ruth is forced into action. Suspecting murder, she launches a one woman campaign to see justice done, and in doing so pits herself against the church and the community, gradually and unknowingly transforming into the character she is preparing to play onstage--crusading, single-minded, fearless Joan of Arc. In Book of Days, Lanford Wilson uses note-perfect language to create a densely populated, unpredictable world filled with intriguing characters who touch each other’s lives through an elaborate series of surprising connections.
Due to mature themes and language, this production is intended for Upper School audiences only.