Three for One
HCC Theater Dept. presents 'Arranged, Proposed, Overruled!' Nov. 19-21
The Holyoke Community College Theater Department will present three one-act plays as its fall production, each a comedy poking at the institution of marriage, and each directed by a different HCC theater alum.
“Arranged, Proposed, Overruled!” brings to the stage The Proposal by Anton Chekhov, A Marriage has been Arranged by Alfred Sutro, and Overruled by George Bernard Shaw.
“To my knowledge, this is a novel collection of one-acts,” said HCC Assistant Theater Professor Matthew Whiton, the show’s production manager and stage designer. “I’m not aware of any production that’s done these three plays together.”
“Arranged, Proposed, Overruled!” opens Nov. 19 and runs through Nov. 21 with performances at 7:30 p.m. each night in HCC’s Leslie Phillips Theater and a matinee at 2 p.m. on Nov. 21.
Directing the plays are Denise Boutin of East Longmeadow (HCC class of 1977, The Proposal); Michael Pray of North Oxford (class of 2009, A Marriage Has Been Arranged), and Gabriel CiFuentes of Chicopee (class of 2018, Overruled).
As students, all three directors were deeply involved in HCC’s theater program and have continued to work in theater since graduating.
Boutin, a student of the legendary HCC theater professor Leslie Phillips, founded the theater program at the MacDuffie School in Springfield and taught there for 25 years. She is a co-founder of HCC’s annual 24-hour Phillips Theater Festival and directed the fall 2016 HCC production of An American Daughter, by Wendy Wasserstein.
Pray is a freelance fight and movement choreographer and acting instructor at Worcester Academy. He has worked as a teaching artist with the Serious Play Theater Ensemble and was a founding member of Tieline Theater. He served as artistic director for HCC’s One Act Theater Festival in 2015 and fight choreographer in 2021 for HCC’s production of Fatal Fisticuffs, an original play about a fictional, Mortal Kombat-style video game.
CiFuentes is an English teacher and member of the theater faculty at Multi-Arts in Hadley, a summer arts program for children. He played the lead role of Berenger in HCC’s 2017 production of Rhinoceros, by Eugene Ionesco, and had a leading role in An American Daughter, where he was directed by Boutin.
Whiton said the theme of marriage sort of came up organically and not at all by design.
“I invited each of the three directors to come on board, and, once they accepted, I gave them free rein,” he said. “I asked them for short plays written before or around 1900, and they sent me their ideas. We kind of got lucky. The theme could have easily gone down a dark, rabbit hole. We could have gone all horror – or plays about overthrowing kings.”
As it turned out, all three of the plays come from turn-of-20th-century Europe (The Proposal, 1890; A Marriage has been Arranged, 1904; Overruled, 1912).
“They each have a different take on the institution of marriage, and they’re all slightly irreverent about it,” said Whiton.
In The Proposal, a young man named Lomov comes to propose to his neighbor Natalya, but they keep arguing over various other topics.
A Marriage has been Arranged presents a single scene in which Mr. Crockstead, a self-made millionaire, proposes marriage to a noble but poor woman, Lady Aline de Vaux, who initially refuses.
Overruled concerns two couples who want to switch partners.
Inviting alumni as guest directors is not new for HCC, but Whiton said that by bringing on three at the same time, he hoped to engage other theater alumni as well. To that end, HCC theater professors Gyuri Kepes and Tim Cochran will be recording interviews with alumni in the theater lobby before each performance.
“We’re hoping to get a strong turnout of folks who participated in theater in some fashion as a major or just as a student activity,” he said.
If You Go
“Arranged, Proposed, Overruled!”
Nov. 19-21, 7:30 p.m.
Nov. 21, 2 p.m.
Nov. 20, ASL-interpreted
Leslie Phillips Theater
HCC Fine & Performing Arts Building
Tickets: $10 general admission
(available at the door or call 413-552-2528 to reserve)
PHOTO: Student actors MacKenzie Campbell of Chicopee (as Gregory Lunn), left, and Kayla Saintilma of Springfield (as Mrs. Juno) rehearse a scene from Overruled, a one-act play by George Bernard Shaw.
