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The SUNY Fredonia Department of Theatre and Dance will stage the premiere of this work by Red Shuttleworth from Feb. 24 to March 3 in Bartlett Theatre at Rockefeller Arts Center. Tickets are available through the SUNY Fredonia Ticket Office in the modular complex in the Dods Hall parking lot across from the Williams Center, by phone at 716-673-3501 (1-866-441-4928) or online at www.fredonia.edu/tickets |
By Doug Osborne-Coy
The SUNY Fredonia Department of Theatre and Dance will stage the world-premiere production this month of a work by award-winning writer Red Shuttleworth.
Shuttleworth’s play “High Plains Fandango” tells of a small town in Nebraska struggling to survive amidst a plot to buy up all of its water rights. It will be the next offering in the 2011-12 Walter Gloor Mainstage Series.
Six performances are planned in Bartlett Theatre at Rockefeller Arts Center on the SUNY Fredonia campus. Dates and times are: Feb. 24 and 25 and March 1, 2 and 3 at 8 p.m. and Feb. 26 at 2 p.m. The event is sponsored by Niebel Realty as part of the Lake Shore Savings Season.
Shuttleworth said “High Plains Fandango” takes on the “coming threat of water privatization in the face of national and international water shortages. The American West, long subject to extraction economies, booms and busts, faces a not-so double-edged Bowie knife, progress and full-bore despoliation.”
“High Plains Fandango” contains adult language and sexual content. It is intended for mature audiences.
Shuttleworth has received two Spur Awards for “Best Poetry” from Western Writers of America and was named “Best Living Western Poet” by True West magazine in 2007.
Shuttleworth’s poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, including Prairie Schooner, South Dakota Review, Southwest Review and Weber: The American West. His poetry has also been collected in more than 20 pocket books.
Shuttleworth’s latest poetry pocket book, “We Drove All Night,” appeared in September 2011 from Finishing Line Press in Kentucky.
His plays have been presented widely, including at Churchill Arts Council (Fallon, Nev.), Foothill Theatre (Nevada City, Calif.), Spirit of the Horse Theatre (St. Paul, Minn.), Sundance Playwrights Lab, Sun Valley Festival of New Western Drama and the Tony Award-winning Utah Shakespearean Festival.
As a special event, the department is also sponsoring a poetry reading of Shuttleworth's poems, with a special guest appearance by poet Brooke Horvath. Horvath, a professor of English at Kent State University, is the author of "Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems" (with Tim Wiles). Shuttleworth played professional baseball at the AA level with the Durham Bulls, and has written several poems on baseball, including he chapbook, "Bullpen Catcher." The joint poetry reading will be held Friday, Feb. 24 at noon in the Bartlett Theatre on campus.
