01 Apr 2018 UCA Theatre to present ‘Arms and the Man’

Posted at 12:59 PMh in Events by

UCA Theatre will present the critically acclaimed “Arms and the Man” by celebrated playwright George Bernard Shaw in the Bridges/Larson theatre in the Snow Fine Arts Center on campus in April.

Performances are scheduled at 7:30 p.m. April 12, 13, 19 and 20 as well as two matinee shows at 2 p.m. April 14 and 21.

Stacy Pendergraft, associate professor of Theatre Arts and Dance at the University, will be guest director.

“I have never directed or acted in Shaw before, so I have enjoyed the challenge of ‘unpacking’ his world view, humor and language both for myself and for the students with whom I’m working,” Pendergraft said.

The cast includes Brynn Woods as Raina Petkoff, Kaelin Taylor as Catherine Petkoff, Sidney Kelly as Louka, Augustine Nguyen as Captain Bluntschli, Saxon Whitehead as Major Petkoff, Zach Ashley as Sergius Saranoff, Taylor Fulgham as Nicola and Nick Bosworth as Russian Soldier.

“Arms and the Man” is a comedy that follows a young woman as she discovers that war is not as glamorous and romantic as she at first assumed. The play begins during the Serbo-Bulgarian War in 1885 and follows through the aftermath of the signing of the peace treaty. 

“Ironically, Shaw satirizes the grandiose, romantic notions of going to war by placing the story in the Balkans, a geographic location that has become a hotbed of unrest and decidedly unromantic outcomes in our own time,” Pendergraft said. “So our team has capitalized on the duality of a developing country with a history steeped in Easter ‘otherness’ and a newly-elite social class enthralled by the trappings of Viennese culture.”

Tickets are $10 for the general public and free to UCA students. Tickets are available through UCA Ticket Central located in the box office at Reynolds Performance Hall. Box office hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. The general public may purchase tickets at uca.edu/tickets. 

For more information, contact Melissa Pearson, UCA Theatre business manager, at 501.450.5092 or [email protected].