In October, Sweet Briar senior Mary Susan Sinclair-Kuenning enchanted audiences as Jo March, headstrong heroine of the College’s fall musical,
“Little Women.” Next month, Sinclair-Kuenning — the second half of which is pronounced “Kenning” — will direct “Big Love” for her senior directorial project.
Performances will be held at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Dec. 5 and 6 in the Babcock Studio Theater. Tickets are free and available starting Monday, Dec. 1. While not required, reservations are highly recommended, and the play is not suitable for children.
Mary Susan Sinclair-Kuenning will direct “Big Love.” Written by
Charles Mee, “Big Love” is a modern retelling of Aeschylus’ “The Danaids,” one of the oldest plays of the Western world. It is the story of 50 sisters who flee Greece to Italy so they won’t be forced to marry their cousins. The sisters seek refuge in a villa but are eventually discovered by their fiancés and, as Mee writes on his Web site, “mayhem ensues.”
In a review on CurtainUp.com, Dave Lohrey describes “Big Love” as a “vaudevillian tragicomedy,” adding, “It is, to say the least, a most improbable combination, but it works, gloriously.”
The varied, physical nature of the play was one thing that attracted Sinclair-Kuenning, a double major in dance and theater. “I thought the show fit my style because it is so physical,” she said. “Many of the themes and major actions of the play rely heavily on the physicality of movement, and that appeals to me as both a dancer and an actor.”
She also admired Mee’s “great ability to capture human nature so well. There are so many subtle nuances of human relationships that he manages to get into his work.”
Sinclair-Kuenning had read “Big Love” for a contemporary drama class at Sweet Briar and was encouraged by her professor and classmate
Liz Zuckerman to direct it for her senior project. “We’d read ‘Big Love’ … and I think everyone in the class had fallen completely in love with it,” Zuckerman, a theater and creative writing double major, said.
“Since she was interested in his work already, [Professor Bill Kershner and I] … did everything we could do to talk her into doing it because we loved it so much. It flipped my lid when I found out she actually was [doing it]. It was like, ‘Yes!’ ”
Zuckerman later won the part of Lydia, the play’s female lead. Other cast members include Sweet Briar students Catherine Tooke, Kat Alexander, Tania Salas Platt, Britt Patterson, Sarah Phillips, Emily Prince, Jordana Weiner, Lauren Burke, Paulina Grochala, Corey Latta, Brooke Watts, Sam Britell and Ginny Lightfoot; SBC religion professor John Goulde; and local actors Matt Johnson, Dan Garrett and Omar Ott.
“Big Love” is Sinclair-Kuenning’s first full-length directorial effort. After she graduates next spring, she plans to move to New York City to pursue a career as a dancer, actress or both.
Tickets are available on a first-come-first-served basis at the venue. For more information, contact Shelbie Filson, box office manager, at
sfilson@sbc.edu or (434) 381-6120.
– By
Suzanne Ramsey,
SBC staff writer
