WAM Theatre Presents "Melancholy Play"

PITTSFIELD, Mass. (Mass Appeal) - It is a Bold, Outward, Sassy, Sexy and Unashamed contemporary farce opening this weekend - a play by a female playwright and WAM theatre's first with a local beneficiary, The Women's Fund of Western Massachusetts. Per Janson, an actor in Melancholy play and Kristen Van Ginhoven, co-artistic director of WAM Theater and director of Melancholy play.

It is a contemporary farce that centers around a bank teller named actually W Tilly who makes her melancholy so sexy that Lorenzo falls instantaneously in love with her. Something happens to Tilly that turns her melancholy into happiness and when she becomes happy, everybody else becomes melancholy. The last third of the play is about the rest of the charactering working together as a community to try to return Francis the almond back to a human state.

It's a very quirky magical surreal play. The reason it's an almond is because the major center for emotion in the brain is shaped like an almond. She takes the metaphor to its furthest degree and the almond metaphor goes through the whole play and we have surprises for the audience when they come that includes almonds. We're trying to celebrate the whole almond idea.

The message is about when somebody in your community is experiencing melancholy, that it's our responsibility to join together to try to get them out of that state and help them through that state. That's one of the reasons we wanted to choose the play. It's because the whole idea of WAM Theatre is about creating opportunity and empowering people to reach their potential. We thought this play is a really nice fit for that idea.

WAM Theatre stands for women's action movement theatre. It's something myself and Lee Strimbeck cofounded after reading the book "Half the Sky." In the book, they lay out a very clear agenda about what one can do to actually make a difference about the issue of oppression for women and girls worldwide. Lee and I are both theater professionals and we wanted to create a philanthpic theater company. It sounds completely insane but we wanted to create opportunities for people like pare to have a job in the opportunity and provide opportunities for women artists and also to have a philanthropic bend where with every show we do we donate a portion of the proceeds to an organization that benefits women and girls.

I actually went to their annual dinner about a year ago and was extremely inspired by the work they do which includes strategic planning initiatives and grant making opportunities. I loved the idea a donor could provide money to WAM Theatre and a portion of our box office proceeds could then be handed down to the women's fund to be used in their granting initiatives and it becomes a triple philanthropy opportunity. It's exciting the work they do and the amount of opportunities they provide for people in western Massachusetts was very inspiring and the fact that WAM Theatre could have a small part in helping other people's ideas turn into reality made us want to pursue this idea.

I play a character named Lorenzo who comes from unspecified European country. He starts off the play really happy. Even though he's an orphan who was abandoned at a candy shop in this unspecified European country, he stayed happy until he meets the character Tilly, the melancholic one and falls deeply in love with her and he's thrown into melancholy himself and goes to ridiculous lengths to pursue her including this absurd fight that involves two people running into a pole, all kinds of mayhem.

The play does open tomorrow night, which is very exciting. It's almost sold out which is very exciting. We have performances Friday and Saturday night at 8:00 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at 3:00 p.m. Our saturday matinees have a talk back. We perform this weekend and next weekend in Pittsfield on Pittsfield's North Street and the New Stage Performing Center is right above the Beacon Cinema.

The more tickets we sell, the more we can donate to the women's fund. We'd love to fill the theater.

Melancholy Play
New Stage Performing Arts Center
Pittsfield, Ma
Tickets: $25 General Public; $12 Students

For more information visit WAMTheatre.com .