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Idawalley, an original play by Maggie Kearnan 鈥�14, will launch the new season on January 26, while acclaimed stage and screen actor Bryce Pinkham鈥攁 2005 alumnus and this semester鈥檚 Monan Professor in Theatre Arts鈥攚ill direct an April production of Leonard Bernstein's contemporary operetta Candide, in which Pinkham performed as a student the last time it was staged on campus. Pinkham is widely known for originating the role of Monty Navarro in the Tony-winning production of A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, for which he was nominated for Tony, Grammy, and Drama Desk awards. 听

Idawalley, directed by Grace Cutler 鈥�24, is inspired by the life of female lighthouse keeper Idawalley Lewis of Newport, Rhode Island. Kearnan鈥檚 play follows the life of Lewis and her family on Lime Rock: maintaining the lighthouse while facing ghosts from their past, as well as the changing times and what they portend. The play will run through January 29 in Robsham's Bonn Studio Theater.

Blue Stockings by Jessica Swale will follow in Bonn Studio February 23-26,听directed by Theatre Department Associate Professor of the Practice Patricia Riggin.

A moving, comical, and eye-opening story of four young women fighting for education against the larger backdrop of women's suffrage, the play follows Tess Moffat and her fellow 鈥渇irst years鈥� who are determined to graduate, but don鈥檛 anticipate the hurdles in their way: the distractions of love, the cruelty of the class divide, and the strength of the opposition.

Theatre Department Chair and Associate Professor of the Practice Luke Jorgensen calls it 鈥渂oth historical and hysterical." The action, he said, centers on the first group of women allowed entry to Girton College in England in 1896. "The college is allowing them to study but not graduate; the women band together to face entrenched chauvinism, violent misogyny, and the academy, demanding to be treated as equals.鈥�

Bonn Studio will also be the venue, March 23-26, for Dead Man鈥檚 Cell Phone, a play by Sarah Ruhl and directed by Lily Telegdy 鈥�23: 鈥渁 quirky dark comedy which explores technology鈥檚 ability to both isolate and unite us,鈥� said Jorgensen, who noted that the two student-directed plays are workshop productions: the director and designers are students mentored by department faculty.

Dead Man鈥檚 Cell Phone centers on the odyssey of a woman forced to confront her assumptions about mortality, redemption, and the need to connect in a technologically obsessed world. It is a play鈥攑resented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc.鈥攁bout "how we memorialize the dead, and how that remembering changes us."