March 06, 2015

Spring Main Stage 2015: EXIT THE KING by Eugene Ionesco

Director: Guest Faculty Robert Quillen Camp
Scene Designer: Associate Professor Michael Olich
Costume Designer: Senior Thesis Candidate Kaylie Hatos
Lighting Designer: Staff Technical Director Matthew Robins

Visit the Box Office for ticket information.

 

about  EXIT THE KING

 

The absurdist playwright Eugène Ionesco wrote the witty, raucous, and ultimately deeply moving play Exit the King in 1962 after suffering from a serious illness in his middle age. He wrote that the illness and the fear that it provoked prompted him to see if “one could learn to die.” More than anything else, Exit the King is his attempt to come to grips with the inevitability of death. But it is at the same time a play that celebrates life, delighting in all of its ridiculousness, preposterousness, and fragile beauty.
The production features a cast of nine undergraduate student actors, as well as scores of supporting student and faculty production staff. It is directed by guest faculty member Robert Quillen Camp, and features Emily Hodgson ’15 in an acting thesis performance as Queen Marguerite. Through the creation of a rich and strange dying world, realized in the scenic design by Associate Professor Michael Olich, the lighting design by Staff Technical Director Matthew Robins, the thesis costume design by Kaylie Hatos ’15, and the projection design by Trevor Sargent ’16, this multimedia production highlights the striking parallels that Ionesco draws between the inescapable death of the self and the threat of total environmental collapse.