Contact: Morgan Tubbs
STARKVILLE, Miss.--The Mississippi State communication department's Theatre MSU will present "Deadwood Dick, or The Game of Gold!" for three performances this week.
The 7:30 p.m. programs take place April 12-14 in the university's McComas Hall main theater.
Individual $10 general admission tickets will be sold at the door. For online purchases, visit www.comm.msstate.edu/dept/theatre/.
Songs of the "Gay Nineties" and special music by Starkville pianist Charles H. "Chip" Templeton will frame the Western classic. Templeton is an associate with the North Mississippi Research and Extension Center.
In 1876, little-known writer Edward L. Wheeler started producing dime novels about "Deadwood Dick, Robin Hood of the Black Hills." An overnight success, the story series continued for 15 years and produced 64 novels.
Taking the most exciting situations, colorful characters and amusing dialogue from these novels, playwright Tom Taggart has fashioned a show with the elements that make these blood-and-thunder melodramas so hilarious: six-gun heroes, lily-pure maidens, black-hearted gamblers, long lost daughters, stolen gold mines, kidnapped heroines, and hairbreadth escapes.
In addition to communication, the 25-member student cast represents academic departments throughout campus, including kinesiology, education, psychology, mechanical engineering, and civil engineering.
"It's a fun show because it's so over the top," said senior Grant Alexander, an English and psychology double-major of Starkville, who portrays "Pong Ping." "I think audiences will have as much fun watching it as we do performing it."
Communication professor Donna Clevinger, the play's director, agreed that she and the students "have all enjoyed this so much."
"We're ready for audiences to come and share in this great melodrama," Clevinger added.
Mississippi State is online at msstate.edu.
For additional information, contact Clevinger at 662-325-4034 or dclevinger@comm.msstate.edu.