Roger Herzel to Give Pre-Show Talk on Friday, February 24, 3 p.m.

"The Originality of She Stoops to Conquer” will be the focus of Dr. Roger Herzel's pre-show talk on Friday, February 24, at 3:00 p.m. in the Ruth N. Halls Theatre. Professor Herzel will discuss the Oliver Goldsmith play, its sources, and why it is considered one of the great masterpieces of English comedy

Professor of theatre history, theory, and literature in the Department of Theatre and Drama, Herzel is an eminent Molière scholar. He is the author of The Original Casting of Molière's Plays and wrote the entries on Molière and sixteen other seventeenth-century French actors in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance. His articles have been published in a number of journals including PMLA, Modern Language Notes, Dix-Septième Siècle, and Theatre Survey. The “natural” style of Molière and his company is the subject of the paper he presented in September at the international conference of the Society for 17th -Century French Studies held at the University of Cambridge. Molière's redefinition of stage space in The Misanthrope was the topic of the paper he delivered in January at the University of Paris-Sorbonne to a conference on seventeenth-century French theatre history.

Dr. Herzel was awarded the prestigious William Riley Parker Prize of the Modern Language Association in 1982 and was an American Council of Learned Societies Research Fellow in 1977 and 1982. From 1980 to 1990 he served as Editor of Theatre Survey, the journal of the American Society for Theatre Research. The Theatre and Drama Department's Director of Graduate Studies from 1986 to 1997, he is also a member of the IU faculties in Comparative Literature, West European Studies, and Performance Studies.

Dr. Herzel's courses focus on the areas of European theatre history and dramatic literature, covering the periods from the Greeks through the nineteenth century. Among plays he has taught and enjoyed over the years is Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer, and in his talk, he will consider Goldsmith's best-known play as a reflection of the larger world of eighteenth-century theatre, especially Marivaux's Le Jeu d l'Amour et du Hasard (The Game of Love and Chance), which provides much of the romantic plot of the English comedy.

Join us in the Ruth N. Halls Theatre February 24 at 3:00 p.m. for a discussion of She Stoops to Conquer that promises to be both delightful and informative.

-------Tom Shafer

• The People of the Production
• Press Release
• She Stoops to Conquer Homepage
• New Acting/Directing Faculty Fontaine Syer CONQUERS Her First IU Production
• Meet the MFA: Brendan Pentzell (Mr. Hardcastle)
• Meet the MFA: Gregory C. Brenchley, Lighting Designer