IU Theatre debuts ‘Cat On A Hot Tin Roof’

Greed, truth and tension will be examined through the interactions of a conflicted Southern family this weekend as IU Theatre presents Tennessee Williams’ “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.”

Performances will take place at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Ruth N. Halls Theatre, with additional shows next week.

The play, which takes place over the course of a single evening, tells the story of a dying family patriarch and his problem-filled sons, alcoholic Brick and greedy Gooper, and their wives, Margaret and Mae.

“The most unusual thing about Brick is that most characters are fighting to win something, but in Brick’s case, left to his own devices, he’s actually kind of fighting to lose,” Aaron Kirkpatrick, a third-year M.F.A. student who plays Brick, said.

Andrea Mellos plays Brick’s wife, Margaret. Mellos said her character is very different from her husband.

“Where Brick runs away from the truth, Maggie has a magnetic pull towards the truth,” Mellos said. “She’s a very raw person.”

Because the play takes place in the Mississippi Delta, all of the actors had to adopt strong Southern accents.
 
Kirkpatrick said he finds it easier to take on an accent immediately instead of waiting to add it later in a rehearsal process.

“When you can hear the voice of the character in your head, then you get so much closer to being in the body of it,” he said.

Kirkpatrick said the dialect is an essential part of the overall performance.

“You can’t do Williams without the accent because the musicality of the text is part of the fabric of the play,” he said.

Mara Lefler plays Mae, the sister-in-law of Brick and Maggie who is fighting with them over the family inheritance.

The second-year M.F.A. student said she found it difficult to play a character that people generally don’t like.

“The hardest part about Mae was to make sure that I found the justification in her action and the sincerity in her action,” Lefler said.

Mae and Maggie find themselves in constant conflict, although they share many similarities.

“The jealousies that end up happening between Mae and Maggie are quite fascinating because they both have things that the other person wants,” Lefler said.

Sound designer Suli Stuelpnagel said she didn’t want a lot of music in the show because of the high level of emotion and tension between the characters.

“The director and I talked and we both agreed that we didn’t want a lot of underscoring in the show because we didn’t feel like it needed it,” she said.

Stuelpnagel said the writing speaks to the mood of the show and that it was her job to enforce that mood.

“Tennessee Williams writes in his scripts exactly what he wants,” she said. “The hardest part about designing it was the ambiance and picking the music. There’s so little music, so you really have to pick it well.”

Lefler said she admires Williams for not writing typical characters.

“Something incredibly lovely about Tennessee Williams and the plays that he writes is that he doesn’t write characters that are not fully developed,” she said.

Kirkpatrick said his character’s internal struggle was a major conflict.

“The saddest thing about what Brick has gone through and what Brick’s still going through is that the one who’s judging him the most, his biggest adversary, is himself,” he said.

This conflict, as well as the problems of other characters, are not necessarily resolved by the end of the play.

“You start with a glimmer of ‘tomorrow might be a better day than today’ was because he’s been forced to face some truths about his life that he’s been fervently trying to avoid,” Kirkpatrick said.

Follow reporter Rachel Osman on Twitter @rachosman.