Swine Palace presents comedy to die for
Swine Palace will celebrate its final performances of the 2001-2002 season with “Death of a Salesman.”
The Arthur Miller classic holds new meaning, as it is a focus on the American Dream and what it means to be living in this country today.
“I hope people will take a new look at this play,” said Leon Ingulsrud, director of the production and co-founder of the SITI Company located in New York. “It raises thoughts on what it means to be living in America.”
The play centers on salesman “Willy Loman,” a man forced to face who he is and realize he has not reached the dreams he set for himself and his sons.
“Willy” eventually loses touch with his own reality, causing his sons, who are involved in deciding which of their own paths to chose, to deal with “Willy” and his fleeting dreams.
With the events that have occurred in the nation recently, Ingulsrud wants the audience to relate “Death of a Salesman” to their lives today.
The play raises deep questions about failure and whether everyone is created equal, Ingulsrud said.
As the play focuses on the American Dream, audience members are challenged to find the connection to the qualities of life desired now.
“We confuse the American dream with success,” Ingulsrud said. “It’s that we each have value and are free to fail.”
Like many classics, “Death of a Salesman’s” ability to touch every time period makes it a vital story that never dies.
“I’m very interested in working on so-called American classics,” Ingulsrud said. “I think a lot of our classics are underrated.”
Ingulsrud is a veteran director having directed three adaptations of “Moby Dick,” a handful of Shakespearean plays, “Grapes of Wrath” and Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame.” “Death of a Salesman” will be his first Baton Rouge production.
Producing the play in Baton Rouge, for Ingulsrud, makes it especially moving.
“What it means to be an American citizen is much richer, but it’s more complicated,” Ingulsrud said in regards to the city’s multiplicity. “It’s not one dominating cultural source.”
Keeping in step with the multicultural theme, Ingulsrud hoped to have a more diverse cast.
Though the 40 undergraduates and outside actors making up the chorus are diverse, Ingulsrud would have liked the cast to have been more distinctive.
The cast of more than 50 actors includes professionals from the SITI Company, actors who made it through the audition process and graduate students who participated in a Movement class Ingulsrud taught last year.
Unlike Swine Palace’s other plays this season, “Death of a Salesman” is “more abstract” and uses elements of dance, Ingulsrud said.
He added that the configuration of the theater is rounded, allowing for more space to be used for the play.
While this particular production of “Death of a Salesman” is scripted as Miller wrote it, there have been a few “nips and tucks” but no structural changes.
“I think people will think we’ve messed the play up, but we’ve changed very little in the way it was written,” Ingulsrud said.
Ingulsrud wants the audience to view the play in a way they never have before.
“I don’t think it’ll be what people expect — hopefully” Ingulsrud said.
“Death of a Salesman” will run Friday through Sunday, March 30, and will be held in the Reilly Theater.
Performances will run Wednesday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m., and on Sunday at 2 p.m from March 15 through 30.
Admission is $12 for students, $15 for seniors and LSU employees and $25 to $30 for the general public. Seating is reserved.
Tickets can be purchased at the Reilly Theatre Box Office, (225) 578-3527, Mondays through Fridays from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and one hour prior to each performance. Tickets can also be purchased at the LSU Union Box Office, (225) 578-5128, Ticketmaster locations, (225) 761-8400 or online at http://www.swinepalace.org.