Tony Award winning playwright and distinguished NMSU Professor Mark Medoff has once again chosen a graduate student work to direct. Every year Medoff takes submissions from current and former students, all entering their scripts for a chance to work with the well-known director and see their work come to life. This year the script called I, Custer written by Neal Adelman was chosen.
The Las Cruces Community Theatre presented I, Custer in March to rave reviews and now the play will come to Silver City at the Webb Theater on the campus of Western New Mexico University for one night only on Saturday, April 9 at 7:30 p.m. WNMU Associate Professor Ann Marie Elder served as the Production Stage Manager and Sound Designer for the production in Las Cruces and is now bringing the play to the Silver City community. A $10 donation is suggested with free admission to WNMU students.
Adelman was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas and now lives in Las Cruces. He writes plays and short stories. His one act play Tarrant County was a 2014 Kennedy Center for the Arts College Theatre Festival John Cauble Outstanding Short Play National Finalist and his full length play Pontiacs was the 2015 recipient of the Kennedy Center for the Arts College Theatre Festival Mark Twain Award.
“There is little that is more joyful for me at this time of life than to work with my students on their creative work and to bring with me some of the core artists in my theatrical team. Neal Adelman appeared in a graduate playwriting class of mine five years ago. He was getting an MFA in prose-writing,” said Medoff. He adds, “I heard about three sentences of the as yet unnamed play and knew he was up to something very special.”
I, Custer begins moments before the Battle of Little Big Horn and reimagines the final moments of George Armstrong Custer. Shot in the face and dying, Custer meets up one last time with his beautiful and loving wife, Libbie, to figure out what went wrong. A one-person show, Marissa Bond plays Custer and explores the history of the boy General, his myth, and the origins and extraordinary appeal of war.
Marissa Bond is a regular on the theatre stages in Las Cruces. Some of her recent performances include No Strings Theatre Company’s Mad Gravity, the 2015 Mark Medoff Directorial Project, Recreational Living and Muffin Mix Productions short film, Perfect.
Mark Medoff received the Tony and Olivier Awards for Children of a Lesser God and was nominated for an Academy Award and a Writers Guild of America Best Adapted Screenplay Award for the film script of Children. Mr. Medoff and Neal Adelman will be present for the performance and a talk-back will be held immediately afterwards.