Chris and Mariah are divorced, but they still live together because neither of them can afford to lose their fabulous loft apartment. While Mariah is in Beijing on a disastrous art tour arranged by her disinterested gallerist Levy, Chris convinces a new girlfriend that he is a tragically young widower. She falls for the ruse. So does her suddenly interested gallerist Levy. When Mariah returns home, she discovers that her art is worth significantly more now that she is dead.
Why not just stay dead, rake in the money, and haunt Levy for good measure?
Tickets are now available for “Untitled Series #7,” a new comedy by award-winning playwright Ellen Struve. It opens at the Shelterbelt Theatre January 22. Struve is best known for her hit drama “Recommended Reading for Girls” at the Omaha Community Playhouse and “Prince Max’s Trewly Awful Trip to the Desolat Interior,” which was featured last summer at the Great Plains Theatre Conference and work shopped at the prestigious PlayPenn Conference in Philadelphia.
Why a comedy? “I needed some fun on the page after “Prince Max,” explains Struve. “I was just trying to write something totally different, and it wound up being the easiest play I’ve ever written.” Plus, after years of research and writing about an obscure Midwestern scientific expedition, it was time to turn to something familiar. “I turned forty and a bunch of my friends were getting divorced and I wanted to revisit a time with some characters that I may have known from my Chicago art scene days.”
Struve graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago and spent four years working as an art coordinator and an assistant to the president, hobnobbing with artists and high end collectors at art openings. She attended dinners at the home of Jerry Saltz, then the senior art critic for the Village Voice, and his wife Roberta Smith, the senior art critic of the New York Times. She’s been there and seen that.
Struve’s experiences were quite real, but her characters are entirely fictional. “Levy, the gallerist, is horrible. He’s a horrible person.” But in the hands of Eric Salonis? “He’s so smart. His Levy is amazing.” So is the rest of Struve’s cast, which includes Laura Leininger-Campbell, Mike Palmreuter and Jennifer Gilg. “Sometimes I’m amazed listening to them at rehearsal,” says Struve. “I think it would be impossible to not enjoy these people on stage.” Especially when they are starring in a comedy by Omaha’s premier playwright.
The Shelterbelt’s production of “Untitled Series #7: A Comedy,” written by Ellen Struve and directed by Roxanne Wach, will run from January 22 through February 14. Curtain is 8 pm on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. Curtain on Sunday nights is 6 pm except for a closing Sunday matinee time of 2 pm. There will be a TAG Night Out on Thursday, January 21. The house opens thirty minutes before curtain. Tickets are $15 for adults and $12 for students, seniors and TAG members. They are available for purchase at: http://www.shelterbelt.org/#!shelterbelt-box-office/c1l4a, or by e-mailing them at boxoffice@shelterbelt.org, or by calling the box office at (402) 341-2725. The Shelterbelt Theatre is located at 3225 California Street in Omaha.