Dramatis Personae in order of appearance:

Publius Terentius Afer, famous author……......Leonard Goff
Mandragola, wealthy seeming widow..Heather McCormack
Senex Antiquus, a miser ……...…….…… Keith Kornajcik
Gaius Erectus, son of Senex Antiquus ….…..Edward Walsh
Thais, grand horizontal ……….….…Maria Sosa-Anderson
Lotta Bella, working girl .......……..…………….Mary Bell
Pragmata Meretrix, working girl ......……….Ellen Stepanek
Doris, working girl……………………………………………….……….. Rachael Guenther
Garrulus Raucus, slave to Gaius Erectus ……………………………..……………. Keith Reilly
Arugula, slave to Mandragola …………………………………………………..Josh Padgett
Nervus Afflictus ………………………………………………….………………Sean Carlin*
…....................................................................................................................David Samuels**
Horsus Gluteus, parasite of Tyrannus Soloflex ………………………….…….…Archie Calkins
Romulus Clulus, son of Senex ………………………………………….….…….Keith Stevens
Mercator Ascriptus, Arabian slave dealer …….....……………………………….. Greg Willey
Cornelia …………………………………………..………………………….…. Dana Vance
Voltemandia ………………………………………………………….…….. Connie Georgalis
Guards …………………………………………………………….………….. Jevon Cooper
.................................................................................................................……..Brian Wiseman
Pulcheria …………………………………………………………….………..Sarah Kaminski
Abdomina, the flexible …………………………………………………….…..Nicolle Saccone
Tyrannus Soloflex, the incomparable ………………....…………….…….….Ricky V. Shartzer
Dorus, a Eunuch …………………………………………….………………….... David Lantz
Porcus Localis ……………...…………………….…………………………… Michael Smith
Alma Viva ……………………………………………………………………….. Sharon Duff
All Rights Reserved. Click here for sample dialogue and information on performance rights.

The Eunuch's Mother-in-law is the story of a pair of brothers, Romulus Clulus and Gaius Erectus, who must compete with the dreaded captain Tyrranus Soloflex for the acquisition of the only Eunuch in Athens. Gaius must get the Eunuch to win his love, the lovely and talented Thais, grande horizontale, , while his brother Romulus must take steps to avoid his arranged marriage to Pulcheria, whose mother, the fiery Mandragola, demands it. He is aided (and hindered) by his slave Nervus Afflictus, and his brother's slave, Garrulus Raucus.The boys' father, the miser Senex Antiquus, is trying desperately to ensure his younger son's marriage so that he can gain the large dowry that supposedly comes with it. Garrulus, slave to Gaius is trying simultaneously to get a Eunuch for his master and make sure that his master's brother Romulus weds his betrothed in order to win his freedom, as promised by Mandragola. Tyrranus Soloflex needs a eunuch to get back into the good graces of Thais. Nervus Afflictus wants to stop getting beaten long enough to make sure his master Romulus marries the girl he's supposed to and not the girl he met on Spring Break. Add to the mix three gabby whores, the local constabulary, unwanted pregnancies, a drugged eunuch and more complications than you can count culminating in all thirty-some characters chasing around a fountain each for a different reason and you get an idea of the seriousness of the proceedings.

A Note from the Writer/Director

Quite a number of years ago, after long and arduous hours of rehearsal on a show written and directed by an otherwise very sensible Johnathan Bolt, I overheard Teresa Wright, the brilliant Academy Award winning actress who was playing the lead for Johnny remark over a very welcome libation, "The only good author is a dead author." At the time, I could only think, "Too true, too true." It seemed so obvious: the duties of author and director are so entirely different that the one should rarely interfere with the other. And surely one should not take on the other's role. But here I am all these years later with "Written and Directed by" before my name. If fools rush in, I have set a new land-speed record. And I'm old enough and vain enough to think that having had each hat on separately in a number of projects that I might be the exception to my own rule. That remains to be seen, but it is certainly a luxury for the director to have the author at every rehearsal to explain what he intended, and to do rewrites as needed. And an even greater luxury to have the director at the late-night writing sessions. We'll see whether the collaboration bears fruit.

This particular project started as part of our year-long focus on and explorations of plot. Plot based plays still please audiences as much, if not more, than plays based on abstract ideas or character sketches. And any self-respecting theatre training program should prepare its students to be confronted with plays driven not by Freud but by plot. Accordingly, Eugene Hare and I thought it would be a good idea to do a classical comedy, and as he had qute recently directed Prof. Barthelmess' translation of Plautus' Menaechmi, I thought (who can remember why) that it would be a wonderful idea to do a translation of one of Terence' comedies. They are rarely performed these days, and yet they have a long history in Academe, having been performed in Universities from medieval times. I had read a number of translations, all of which seemed either too stiff and dry, or too loose and sweaty. A number of insufferably cute translations from the '70s are out there. Surely, I though, I could do better. So I rushed into translating the Eunuchus.

I was quickly humbled by the task. Terence in the original is taut and witty, funny and wise. My attempts were none of these. After a while, I was tempted to abandon the whole idea. But I toyed with one or two other of Terence's plays: Hecyra (The Mother-in-law) and Andria The Woman of Andros). I have decided that I am not much of a translator of Terentian comedy. But late one night, I wondered what Terence himself might do. He, after all, had "borrowed" rather heavily from Menander and others--he was always defending himself in his prologues. And he was also defending his practice of combining more than one plot in a single play--a practice labeled by his contemporaries with the unsavory sounding term contaminatio. It didn't take too much mulling and coffee to decide to do both those things and borrow heavily from Terence, but come up with a more complicated (I think there are about five plot lines--good luck!) story that resembles but is still quite different from the originals.

I hope you enjoy the "contaminatioed" results: The Eunuch's Mother-in-law.

All Rights Reserved. Click here for sample dialogue and information on performance rights.