Southeast Community College

An arguing married couple, a parade of UPS drivers and a salesman caught in the wrong place at the wrong time form the basis of the Southeast Community College Theater Department's production of the comedy "The Marriage Counselor."

The production runs May 29-31 on the Truman Center stage on SCC's Beatrice Campus. Performances are 7:30 p.m. May 29 and 30, 2 p.m. May 31. Admission is free to SCC students, faculty and staff. Tickets for the general public are $5 and will be available at the door. Due to the staging of the production, seating is limited. The doors will open half an hour before show time.

In the show, a hapless vacuum cleaner salesman wanders into an office and is mistaken by an out-of-control couple as their new marriage counselor. Before he can get a word in, they launch into their problems, physically taking out their frustration on their new "counselor." Soon they are joined by a collection of seemingly unconnected visitors who all share some kind of relationship to the feuding couple. The ultimate question, however, is will the poor salesman ever get to say anything in this non-stop comedy by Joey Ouellette.

Playing the much-abused salesman is Jung-Kyu Bae. Alan Holly and Karen Nelson play the rampaging couple. Other cast members are Dustin Lampe, Justin Fern, Baneza Suarez and Amber Peck.

According to Jamie Ulmer, adjunct theater instructor and production director, the show is not only full of laughs, but the staging approach used gives the students and audiences a chance to see something different.

"We're staging this show in the round," Ulmer said. "That means the actors are in the middle, and the audience surrounds them on all four sides."

To achieve this, the audience is seated on the stage for this production. This also limits the number of available seats to just more than 50 people per performance.

"None of the cast has ever done a show in the round before," Ulmer said. "It's been a great learning opportunity for them, because all the rules change compared to a regular proscenium-style staging."

This is Ulmer's first production at SCC and is part of a new partnership the College has formed with Community Players, Beatrice's community theater, where he works as artistic director.

Another element of the partnership, aside from Ulmer occasionally directing for the College, is SCC students can earn course credit for working on productions at Community Players. The idea behind this is to give students exposure to working with the community theater's professional staff and trained volunteers to gain some real-world experience in technical areas of play production.

"We'll be offering the practicum course for the Fall Quarter," Ulmer said. "Anyone with questions about enrolling for the class should contact me."

For more information, contact:
Stu Osterthun
Administrative Director of Public Information and Marketing
(402) 323-3401
sosterthun@southeast.edu