WEST LIBERTY, W.Va., Sept. 7, 2016 — An original full-length play, Rattlesnake, will be perform by professional actor John Hardy for one show only at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 8 at Kelley Theatre. Hardy will also offer a free workshop, Acting in Professional Theatre, from 11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., Friday, Sept. 9, also at Kelley Theatre.
With support from the Arts and Ideas Fund, the play is offered free to the students and public.
Hardy, who is an associate artist with the Barter Theatre, Abingdon, Va., has been working around the country as a playwright, actor and director for more than 30 years.
He plays 16 roles in the drama, which encompasses 30 years in flashback and takes place in various locations in West Texas and later, Paris.
The play concerns a man of West Texas longing for fatherhood. His attempts to realize this ambition are stifled in his romantic life, and rejected by the local adoption agency. He retreats to a small patch of prairie left to him by his long gone mother and father. Here, he meets the rattlesnake, and immerses himself in its world finding a comfort and belonging that eludes him in the outside world. He worships the rattlesnakes and uses their skins for crafting hatbands, belt buckles and other items for sale.
Recalling the lessons of a boyhood acquaintance, an old black woman, he learns to cook the meat of the rattlesnake and becomes a noted chef. His newfound celebrity takes him as far as Paris where he meets a woman who opens her heart to him. He gives over to her but cannot release himself from his bond with the rattlesnake.
He abruptly returns to Texas and enters a densely populated den of rattlesnakes where he sleeps knowing that the den will become his tomb. As the day wakes he is alive and alone. He emerges from the den and returns to his living quarters to find that the Parisian woman has followed him. She tells him of the child he has fathered that lives inside of her.
As a playwright, Hardy he has had 40 plus productions of 15 plays produced across the country and overseas. He recently received the Sara Spencer Award for lifetime achievement from the Southeastern Theatre Conference.
Hardy earned his master’s of fine arts at the University of Alabama and doctoral degree at Texas Tech University.
To reserve a seat for the performance of Rattlesnake, please call the WLU Box Office at 304.336.8277.
“West Liberty University is thrilled to be hosting Dr. Hardy and we encourage any interested student or community member to attend the performance or his “Acting in Professional Theatre” workshop,” said WLU Theatre Director Michael Aulick. “Everyone is welcome.”
“Over the course of his career John has directed over one hundred professional productions including Macbeth, A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Julius Caesar, One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest, Tartuffe, Oedipus the King, Man of La Mancha and others. As an actor John has played many of the great roles including Hamlet, MacBeth, Tom Wingfield in The Glass Managerie, Oberon in A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, Teach in American Buffalo and many others. John has recently returned from a national tour, playing George in Of Mice and Men,” he added.