NEWS RELEASE

Contact: David West (west@alpha.nsula.edu )
News Bureau
Northwestern State University
Natchitoches, LA 71497
(318) 357-6466

9/21/2001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NATCHITOCHES - George Bernard Shaw's modern classic "Major Barbara" will open the 2001-2002 season for the NSU Theatre Sept. 27 ­ Oct. 5 at 7:30 p.m. in Theatre West.

Director Dr. Jack Wann, coordinator of theatre at NSU, says the philosophical content of the play is as current as today's headlines.

"At issue in the plot is the synthesis of the spiritual, the intellectual and the practical to create a new kind of religion that can face head-on and deal with the problems of the modern world," said Wann.

In the play, Andrew Undershaft, a munitions maker and millionaire declares to his daughter Maj. Barbara Undershaft of the Salvation Army and her fiancé Adolphus Cusins, a Greek scholar that we must turn our "oughts into shalls" and "dare to make war on war." Wann said that Undershaft sees war and much of the world's evil doing as the result of one thing -- poverty.

"Undershaft says we should 'erase poverty and life has room in it for the graces of forgiveness, love and humane behavior,''' said Wann.

According to Wann, Undershaft makes cannons realizing that by giving power to the "good" people of the world (if they only have the courage to use it) is the only way to bring about social and spiritual change for the better. But, he refuses to take sides or form alliances. According to Undershaft, evildoers can avail themselves of power unless decent human beings will stand up and be counted. Undershaft says of himself that his greatest enemy is the man he loves most because he keeps him up to the mark.

When Barbara and Cusins are won over by Undershaft's visionary ability to see beyond conventional definitions of good and evil, they realize that they can do more good by employing the power provided through wealth than by trying to ennoble poverty and humility.

"This play is truly a feast for thought. Shaw's gift for words and the precision of his rhetoric contained in pithy comic dialogue is irresistible," said Wann. "This is a play driven by ideas. Shaw's intellectual debates are almost 100 years old but remain pertinent and certainly divisive. You may not be quite sure who you agree with, but you'll certainly hear demanding and eloquent arguments from all quarters.

"Major Barbara was, and is, a revolutionary play and there can be no doubt that his critical intelligence and sharp pen reshaped the theatre of his time and helped to mold the thought of his own and later generations."

Wann points to the current revival of the play on Broadway as evidence of the importance of the writing of this gifted thinker. Shaw, along with Chekhov and Ibsen, forged modern drama. Hopefully, says Wann, this venture into a "thinking man's theatre" will be exciting and rewarding for NSU and Natchitoches-area audiences.

Tickets are free for NSU students and $5 for the general public. For reservations or more information, call (318) 357-6891.

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