Upcoming Liberty theatre season to bring love, laughs to audiences

Love stories, laughs, and lasting works are primed for the stages of Liberty University’s Department of Theatre Arts this fall. From contemporary musicals to Shakespeare, original plays to beloved classics, the lineup of seven productions offers a range of opportunities for students to perform and audiences to enjoy the art of theatre.

When audiences return to the Tower Theater for the start of the new season, they’ll follow a young woman named Anya on her “Journey to the Past” that reveals her connections to the Russian Empire and the Romanov family in the stage adaptation of the 1997 animated film “Anastasia” (Sept. 6-22). With the show’s tremendous scale in its sets and cast, the production by the Alluvion Stage Company (Liberty’s Broadway-quality professional theatre company) is “pulling out all the stops,” according to Theatre Arts Department Chair Linda Nell Cooper, including bringing on six professional actors to join the students and local community members, a lighting designer, and a set that’s been under construction since July 1.

“The story is a rags to riches tale, but it’s one where the girl doesn’t exactly want the riches,” Cooper said. “(Anya) enjoys her simple life and is then thrown into the world of royalty. It’s also a love story, and it’s about falling in love with someone who has been under your nose the whole time. It’s a beautiful fairy tale that’s also based on history, so that’s a nice combination, and it’s overall a grand show to open our season.”

The show will be a popular start to the season, as it is running during Liberty’s Homecoming and first College for a Weekend (CFAW) of the fall semester. Along with the Sept. 7 performance, the Tower Club is hosting a special family event. The club offers four tiers of membership with a chance to attend special events throughout the season to meet student actors, donate to scholarships for current and future students, and more patron perks. (For more information and to join, call (434) 582-2078 or email kpdoby@liberty.edu.)

William Shakespeare’s comedy “As You Like It” (Oct. 18-27) in the Black Box Theater will come next, providing some “lighter fare” of the Bard’s work after past seasons that have featured his tragedies. The play, Cooper explained, will be an opportunity for students to demonstrate their skill at performing Shakespeare and comedy, with the seniors in the cast using the play for their senior capstone role.

“Our students do Shakespeare very well,” Cooper said. “It’s a challenge for them, but they jump to that challenge. It allows them to show off their comic chops as well as their classical Shakespearean acting.”

Audiences may have seen or heard the story of Charlotte Bronte’s 19th-century novel “Jane Eyre,” but Cooper said the musical adaptation set to take the Tower Theater stage on Nov. 8-23 will convey the novel’s heart-wrenching journey of love, loss, and the struggles of morality in a new way.

“The music enhances the love story, since music is all about emotion,” she said. “It makes the show more high stakes. You feel the passion of Jane and Edward Rochester, and it has more of a haunted feeling. It brings all of those emotions together, which is harder to do in just a play.”

At the close of the fall semester, in a one-weekend production, there will be performances of a student-written play, “Before the Tide Rolls Out,” on Dec. 5-8 in the Black Box Theater. The play, created through the department’s Writing Project, tells the story of a family on Tangier Island, located in Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay and home to roughly 300 people, who contemplate relocating to mainland as the island is in danger of sinking. In writing the play last year, students visited the island for research.

The spring semester opens with feathered caps and clashing swords as Alexandre Dumas’ classic tale of “The Three Musketeers” comes to the Tower Theater Feb. 14-23. Performing the dashing adventure allows for the students who have taken stage combat courses to put their skills onstage, and Cooper said it’s yet another love story with a scale worthy of the Tower.

“We teach two stage combat classes, and we always want to find somewhere to showcase those talents, so this show gives us that opportunity,” she said. “It’s also comedic and a love story. It’s just a lot of swashbuckling fun, which is why it’s on the (larger) Tower Theater stage.”

It may have been first performed in 415 BCE, but the Greek play “The Trojan Women” (March 21-30) still carries with it a story that will impact modern audiences in the Black Box Theater. The play portrays the aftermath of the Trojan War through the eyes of a small group of women from the royal house of Troy. Cooper said Liberty hasn’t performed a Greek play since at least the early 1980s, giving even more reason to bring the production to campus.

“With all of our classical acting training, we thought, ‘What a great opportunity to showcase our women actors,’” she said. “It’s very dramatic, it will allow us to fall in love with the language because it’s very different from Shakespeare, and it’s so cleverly written. It’s an opportunity to show how theater transcends time and that stories from 415 BCE can still relate to us today.”

A continued classic in its own right, “The Sound of Music” (April 11-27) will bring the season to a close, featuring the timeless music and warm story that make it one of the most beloved musicals today. In order to bring the Von Trapp family to the stage, the cast will feature child actors who have participated in the theatre program’s annual summer camps.

“It’s yet another wonderful love story, and it allows us to bring in children,” Cooper said. “It has that classic music that everybody knows, and no one around here can do the big shows like we can on the Tower Theater stage.”

Visit the Department of Theatre Arts website for dates and ticket information.