Posted - October 12, 2011

Eureka College Theater to present  ‘Dead Man’s Cell Phone’

November 15 - 20

The Eureka College Theater Department will present the dark comedy “Dead Man’s Cell Phone” by Sarah Ruhl at
7:30 p.m. Nov. 15-19 and 2 p.m. Nov. 20 in Pritchard Theatre.

Erin Cochran and Tim Jenkins star in the dark comedy "Dead Man's Cell Phone."

The play opens with the death of a man in a quiet café and a woman at the next table who answers his incessantly ringing cell phone. The woman’s fateful act dials her deeply into the dead man’s mysterious business and his eccentric family and takes her on trips to the afterlife and the black market. Her odyssey forces her to confront her assumptions about morality, redemption and the need to connect in a technology-obsessed world, as the play explores how we memorialize the dead and how that remembering changes us.

Ruhl is a recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her 2005 play “The Clean House” and for her 2010 play “In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play.”

The guest director is Rhys Lovell of Bloomington, who has taught acting at Illinois Wesleyan University and Illinois State University. He has acted and directed locally and in Chicago.

Cast in the lead role as Jean is Erin Cochran of Collinsville. Rounding out the cast are Tim Jenkins of Watseka as Gordon, the dead man; Alyssa Martin of Peoria as Gordon’s cool and detached widow, Hermina; Kate West of Louisville, Ky., as Gordon’s stoic and aristocratic mother, Mrs. Gottlieb; Louis Servant of Pontiac as Gordon’s quiet and unassuming brother, Dwight; and Alyssa Davis of Winnebago as the beautiful and mysterious Other Woman.

Tickets cost $7 for adults and $5 for students. For reservations call the box office at (309) 467-6363.

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Contact:

Michele Lehman

Media Relations Coordinator

mlehman@eureka.edu

(309) 467-6318