#97-11-22
For Release: 12-8-97
Contact: Peter Bailley
Knox College Theater Faculty, Students and Alumni Win Critical
Acclaim for Chicago Production of "The Mill On The Floss"
A Chicago production of "The Mill on the Floss," a play based on the George
Eliot novel, has won critical acclaim for Knox College students, faculty, and
alumi involved in the play. The show runs through Dec. 21 at Blue Rider Theatre
in Chicago.
In a review published on November 30, the Chicago Tribune called the
production "wildly impassioned and imaginative." In a review on December 2, the
Chicago Sun-Times "highly recommended" the play, which it praised for
"tremendous artistry and vision... under the superb direction of Elizabeth
Carlin Metz."
Carlin Metz, set designer Craig Choma and costume co-designer Margo Shively
are members of the Knox College theater department. Sets and costumes were
built by Knox students in Galesurg and trucked to Chicago for the show. The
Tribune also noted Choma's "beautiful setting... (complete with moving water
wheel)..."
"The Mill on the Floss" is the inaugural production of Carlin Metz's company,
Vitalist Theatre. The involvement of more than a dozen other people with Knox
connections was "a happy mistake," according to Choma, a 1993 Knox theater
graduate. "Originally, Liz contacted me and two Knox alumni who work in theater
in Chicago, and we recruited the others for the cast and crew."
"Knox has always had a great theater department, and I've always wanted to
work in Chicago theater," Carlin Metz explains. "Teaching this term in the
Chicago Semester in the Arts program gave me the opportunity to bring all this
together."
Knox alumi in the cast are Heidi Gottcent, '95, and Kelly Hogan, '92, who also
is associate producer of the show. Crew members include Danielle Mari Shullaw,
'93, and Megan Roth, '96, employed at Design Lab in Chicago. Nedra Woodard
Plonski, '90, served as costume co-designer, and Debra English '93 as master
electrician and technical director.
Based on the novel by George Eliot, "The Mill on the Floss" was adapted for
the stage by the British playwright Helen Edmundson and is the second of
Edmundson's adaptations that Carlin Metz has directed. Last year at Knox,
Carlin Metz directed the North American premier of Edmundson's adaptation of
the Tolstoy novel "Anna Karenina." The two met in 1994, when Carlin Metz was
teaching a Knox program in London.
Eliot's novel depicts the conflict between human passion and Victorian-era
emotional repression. "Helen Edmundson's adaptation is a good story that also
resonates with contemporary feminist concerns," Carlin Metz says.
The adaptation also gained rave reviews from critics after its premiere in
London. The Times of London wrote: "Eliot's novel should have been hard to
stage... But this intensely moving dramatization is inventive yet
simple--stylised but free of empty theatrics... more compelling and more fully
human than the original."
"The Mill on the Floss" runs at 8:00 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays, and 3:00
p.m. Sundays, through Dec. 21 at the Blue Rider Theatre, 1822 S. Halsted,
Chicago, IL. General seating is $14.00 per person with group rates available.
Additional information is available from Carlin Metz at (773) 529-4458, ext. 13
or via e-mail at emetz@knox.edu.
Founded in 1837, Knox is an independent, four-year, liberal arts college,
located in Galesburg, Illinois, with 1,100 students from 42 states and 33
nations. Knox's "Old Main," a National Historic Landmark, is the only building
remaining from the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates.
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