LSUS to stage and screen
‘Summer Dreams’ this weekend
04/12/05

The LSUS Department of Communications will present a production of the one-act play “Summer Dreams,” and a screening of the short film “Summer Dreams,” both written by Sheri Bailey.

The stage production, directed by Robert Alford II, an LSUS assistant professor of communications, will be in the LSUS University Center Theater Friday and Saturday (April 15-16) at 8 p.m., and Sunday (April 17) at 7 p.m. An audience symposium featuring a discussion of the play and film with Alford, the cast and crew will be conducted each night after the screening of the film.

Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door, and $5 for high school and college students, LSUS faculty and staff, senior citizens, military personnel and in groups of persons or more. Tickets will be available at the door one hour before each performance. Advance tickets are available at the LSUS Bookstore, 797-5212. For more information, contact Alford at 318-797-5283 or ralford@lsus.edu.

The play, “Summer Dreams,” is part of the six-play cycle, “Summers in Suffolk,” by Sheri Bailey, which unfolds the rich lives of four Tidewater families from 1870 to 1997. The 35 minute film, “Summer Dreams,” was adapted from the one-act play.

“Summer Dreams” takes place in 1957 in the Hampton Roads area in Southeastern Virginia. A key setting is the Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia – a mysterious location for this psychological love story incorporating drama, comedy and fantasy.

Edna Wilder is a 26 year old Suffolk school teacher who almost lost her mind when her lover, Monroe Roosevelt, abandoned her 11 years earlier after learning of her pregnancy. She stopped speaking altogether for three years and even now has never told her son of his father. That all changes when her closest friends, Maggie and Esper Brinkley, inform Edna that Monroe is on his way back home. Knowing his effect on her and fearing the worst, Edna pays a visit to the heart of the Great Dismal Swamp to find Mama Mojo, the legend of countless Tidewater stories.

Does Mama Mojo hold the key to Edna and Monroe’s destiny or does Edna? Nothing is as it seems – reality becomes a blend of hazy details and wishful thinking and nothing is a lie if it should have been that way.