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Realistic And Absurd Dining At Saint Mary-Of-The-Woods

chef feeds waiter

"Playwright Tina Howe has won many awards for plays that range from the realistic to the absurd and The Art of Dining is her funniest play," says Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College's theatre director Sharon Ammen.

"In the play two friends; Ellen a gourmet chef and Callie a gourmand eater decide to open a restaurant. The set for the café is on the realistic side, but the characters, aided and abetted by our director Brandon Wentz are a bit outsized and a bit on the absurd side."

"We'll have three tables of guests. There's a couple that seems to be substituting food for sex. Next is a trio of three business women, one of whom is always dieting and failing. And then, there's a shy writer meeting with a prospective publisher and simply scattering food everywhere. Conversations and the humor all overlap."

The cast draws on a variety of students from Saint Mary-of-the-Woods. "Chef Ellen is played by Kelsie Uselman who's a theatre major with music minor," says Ammen. "Eater, Callie will be Sherry Bube, a music therapy major who was in last spring's The Sound of Music." In another, Ammen mentions that "the show's even funnier if you know that a student who played the staid Mother Superior in last spring's show plays a far from staid café patron in The Art of Dining."

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