Professional Theatre Returns to Spring Hill

Jun 24th, 2004

Mobile, AL June, 1 2004 - The Tunneldog Project, in association with Spring Hill College Theater, will present August Strindberg's Miss Julie. This limited engagement will run from July 15-18 and 22-25. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday performances begin at 8:00 p.m. Sunday performances begin at 3:00 p.m. Admission is $10.00 and $5.00 for seniors and students. Group reservations are welcome.

The Tunneldog Project, a theater company founded in 1997, has lain dormant since its 2001 production of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. This summer it returns to Mobile theatre with Miss Julie. The impetus to revive the company came from past Tunneldog actor Michael Getto, a Spring Hill College alum and Mobile native currently living and working in New York. "This is something that Mobile needs," says Getto, "Audiences here don't have the same opportunity to see great works of drama that they do in New York."

Michael, his fiance and fellow New York actor, Christine Fall, and Mobile local and original Tunneldog member Maureen Smith, make up the three-person cast. The play is directed by Stephen Campbell S.J., artistic director of the Tunneldog Project and department chair of Fine and Performing Arts at Spring Hill College. The play opens on July 15th and runs through July 25th at the Arlene Mitchell Theater on the campus of Spring Hill College. Cast members are available for advance interviews. Contact Stephen Campbell for appointments.

About The Tunneldog Project
The Tunneldog Project was created in 1997 by Stephen Campbell as an extension of the Theater Department at Spring Hill College. Made up of current students, alumni, and local actors, Tunneldog's aim is to find a new way to test new things-adaptations of fiction and poetry, experiments in performance art, staged readings of new works, maybe looking for new ways of interpreting old things. Past works include Alice in Wonderland, Uncle Vanya and an original adaptation of Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros.

About Strindberg's Miss Julie
It is a hot midsummer's eve and the old Count departs his estate to celebrate elsewhere. He leaves behind his beautiful daughter Julie, the last in the long line of his noble family. Miss Julie is despondent after the breaking off of her engagement to be married. She dances and drinks with the servants who certainly do not accept her as one of their own. A little drunk, she finds herself alone in the kitchen with Jean, her father's footman.

Jean is a strange man - handsome and anarchistic, resentful of the class system but greedy to rise to the top. For many years, he has watched and desired the young Miss Julie. They carry on drinking and become involved in an intense and revealing conversation which draws them together as the night goes on. They hide in his room when the servants come into the kitchen, and he seduces her.

By this late hour Miss Julie has begun to show signs of her deep depression and sometimes unbalanced state of mind. Jean sees her weaknesses and exploits them, humiliating her and pushing her towards the self-destruction that she has been hinting at all evening.


CONTACT INFORMATION:
Stephen Campbell, S.J.
Spring Hill College Theater
251-380-3899