NIU Today

For 200 years, popular culture has used the phrase “met one’s Waterloo” to describe someone who has suffered an utter defeat or an insurmountable confrontation. The phrase was born when the armies of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington met on the battlefield near Waterloo, Belgium, in 1815, resulting in Napoleon’s defeat. NIU’s...

Kay Martinovich, a director, and Robert Schneider, a playwright, both professors in NIU’s School of Theatre and Dance, will explain “Where Drama Comes From” in a free public lecture Thursday, April 21. The lecture begins at 5 p.m. in the Diversions Lounge Theatre in the Holmes Student Center. Both professors will provide examples from their...

The NIU School of Theatre and Dance’s upcoming Mainstage Series production is a Restoration comedy about three young women who find ways to bypass the rules of courtship and marriage. Opening Thursday, Feb. 25, “The Lucky Chance” by Aphra Behn, is the story of three friends: one woman already married and two others about to...

Ready for a bit of musical theater insanity? The Tony Award-winning musical by Peter Weiss, “Marat/Sade,” which opens Thursday, Oct. 23, presents the story of inmates in a lunatic asylum who want to present a play about an assassination. Several years after the end of the French Revolution, the inmates of the lunatic asylum of...

NIU School of Theatre and Dance alumna Charlotte Kate Fox (MFA ’13), who’s hit it big in Japan, is the cover star of the current issue of Backstage magazine. “When Fox submitted for the role of Ellie in the Japanese television drama ‘Massan,’ about the founder of Japan’s whiskey industry, Masataka Taketsuru, and his wife,...

“One would think that Shakespeare had the college audience in mind when developing ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost,’ a play about young adults torn between a life of the mind and a life of pleasure,” says Lara Crowley, an NIU assistant professor of English. Opening Thursday, April 10, in the Holmes Student Center Diversions Lounge, the School...

With its fifth production of the 2012-2013 Studio Series season of plays, the NIU School of Theatre and Dance will present a new take on a classic tale with “Hamlet Redux,” a story of political intrigue and one man’s battle with personal demons. Written by William Shakespeare, the adapted play will run from Wednesday, Feb....

An adaptation of Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales” will be presented as the next Studio Series production of the NIU School of Theatre and Dance. “The Canterbury Tales” originally consisted of 24 stories written by Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. Eight of these stories have been adapted for the stage by visiting...

The NIU School of Theatre and Dance will celebrate Halloween a little late this year with performances of “Evening of Gothic Horror,” opening Thursday, Nov. 3. A collection of classic horror fiction stories by three well-known authors, “Evening of Gothic Horror” is the second production of the school’s 2011-2012 Studio Series, all of which are...

William Shakespeare is coming to the NIU campus … with a musical twist! Opening Thursday, Oct. 20, the NIU School of Theatre and Dance will stage an updated version of Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale,” with settings and circumstances designed to incorporate popular music from the 1950s through 1970s. The play’s slightly altered setting will move...

As the finale to its current season, NIU Opera Theater, in collaboration with the NIU Philharmonic, presents Carlo Menotti’s first English opera, “The Old Maid and the Thief.” Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 1, and 3 p.m. Sunday, April 3, in Boutell Memorial Concert Hall, located at 400 Lucinda Ave. in the NIU Music Building. “The...

Orson Welles’ “Moby Dick Rehearsed” explores what happens when a theater company attempts to stage Herman Melville’s classic novel without any of the necessary scenery or props. The NIU School of Theatre and Dance will perform “Moby Dick Rehearsed” from Thursday, Feb. 24 through Sunday, Feb. 27, and Thursday, March 3, through Sunday, March 6....