New Ground churning out thought-provoking drama
By Julie Jensen, Correspondent, ARGUS/DISPATCH -- September 5, 2002

New Ground Theatre will open its second season tonight with ``Spinning Into Butter,'' a thought-provoking drama by Rebecca Gilman, who earned her master’s degree in playwriting at the University of Iowa. Chris Jansen, New Ground's artistic director, calls it ``a real grabber.''

The show will run through Sunday at Rivermont Collegiate, 1821 Sunset Drive, Bettendorf, and Sept. 13-15 at Potter Hall, Augustana College, Rock Island.

Augustana is partnering in this production, and Jeff Coussens of the theater faculty there plays the leading role of Ross. Beth Crookham plays Sarah, the other lead, and the rest of the cast is Melissa McBain, Pat Flaherty, Michael Carron, Ted Stephens III and Prenston Gale, a newcomer to the stage.

``Spinning Into Butter'' explores racism and political correctness on a small college campus. When an African-American student (who never appears onstage) receives hate mail, everyone on campus tries to be proactive and politically correct, making everything worse.

Ms. Jansen says, ``The `issue' play is making a comeback. In this one, we get a look at the latent racism that may lurk in liberal hearts everywhere.''

The playwright explores the theme with boldness and a nice leavening of humor. When the hate mail arrives, the liberal campus erupts, first with shock, and then with mutual recrimination as faculty and students try to prove their own tolerance by condemning one another.

In the center of this maelstrom is Sarah Daniels, the dean of students. As the administration sponsors ``race forums'' and the students start to form activist groups, Sarah is forced to explore her own feelings of racism, which leads to surprising discoveries and painful insights with unpredictable consequences.

Patty and Gil Koenigsaecker designed the sets and lighting for the show.

New Ground’s next show will be ``Proof'' by David Auburn. It will be presented Nov. 29 through Dec. 1 and Dec. 5-8, with two shows on Saturday, Dec. 7.

The London Times called the drama ``a dangerous, searching, brilliant play, probing the self-inflicted wounds of a self-righteous civilization.''

Ms. Jansen said she started her quest for the rights to ``Proof'' last January. She expected they would be granted without a hitch, but in the next three months, she left scores of unanswered phone messages with Dramatists Play Service in New York.

In late March, she said, ``The very harried guy in charge of professional rights took my call and said, `Do you have any idea what we're going through here?' I said, `None,' and he explained that the six producers in Los Angeles who held the rights were stalling, and Dramatist Play Service had at least 25 professional theaters waiting to hear and postponing the promotion of their seasons until they did.

``I got a flier from Milwaukee Rep advertising their season, including `one exciting play we're working to get the rights for.' I was having a hard time making a second choice, because `Proof' won both the Pulitzer and the Tony in 2001, and I was determined to hang on until the last minute. I finally got a call that we had the rights on the Bix weekend, and I'm proud that our brand-new theater pulled off this coup.''

In ``Proof,’’ as Catherine, the main character turns 25, she must deal with the death of her father, a brilliant but unstable mathematical genius, plus her own worries about how much of her father's genius and madness she has inherited.

It takes place in Chicago during one long weekend and includes the arrival of her estranged sister and the attentions of Hal, a former student of her father's who hopes to find valuable information in the 103 notebooks he left behind.

The New York Daily News wrote, ```Proof' combines elements of mystery and surprise with old-fashioned storytelling to provide a compelling evening of theater. It is a smart and compassionate play of ideas.''

Variety called it ``a wonderfully funny. ambitiously constructed work,'' and New York Magazine labeled it ``the one you won't want to miss.''

Ms. Jansen said, ``This is probably the lightest of all the plays in the season, and it's very funny.''

She will be the director, and the sets and lights will be designed by Kim Aeby, a friend of hers from Brandeis University days who now lives in New Mexico. ``He's coming here to do it,'' she said. ``He once worked for Yale Rep.''

``Wit'' by Margaret Edison will be performed Jan. 30 through Feb. 1 and Feb. 5-9. Lora Adams will be the director. She formerly was artistic director of Evergreen Theater in Wisconsin and is now the marketing director for WQPT-TV in the Quad-Cities.

``Wit'' was an HBO movie shown on PBS, Ms. Jansen said. ``It deals with a woman with a case of terminal cancer looking back on her life, reviewing her most important relationships. Her doctor was a student in a literature class she taught when he was a pre-med student. Although it is a drama, it still has moments of lightness.''

New Ground’s final show of the season, ``Journey for a Reason,’’ will be presented June 19-22 and 26-29. It is a musical written by Ms. Jansen with Andrew Wilder, a New York City composer who has conducted off-Broadway and was assistant conductor for ``The Scarlet Pimpernel'' on Broadway.

They met the summer after Ms. Jansen graduated from Brandeis at the Chapel Hill Chauncy Hall Summer Theatre School, a summer camp for kids from all over the world.

``They suggested that we work together on a show,'' she said, ``and we had almost no time to get the first one together. It was called `Atlantis.' Then we wrote `Journey for a Reason,' which is on this season's schedule here, and our third effort was `The Turnip,' which was performed in Davenport last summer.''

``Journey for a Reason’’ is about teens who live in dysfunctional families. One girl pretends to be normal, and the other can't overcome her problems and function in the normal world.

The songs include ``That's Not What I Meant,'' which tells how a date goes wrong, and ``The Excuse Song,'' which is about ``friends'' unwilling to stand by someone in deep trouble.

``I'm always looking for comedies,'' Ms. Jansen says, ``but they don't seem to be writing them these days. Sophisticated comedy is hard to find.''

If you want to find it anywhere, New Ground will be a good place to dig for it.

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