'The Seagull' a high-flying serio-comic 'adventure'
MICHAEL SMITH World Scene Writer, 06/23/2003
Andrea Akins as Madame Arkadina and Ben Kirberger as Trigorin, perform in Chekhov's play "The Seagull." ROBERT S. CROSS/ Tulsa World
After three years as the drama instructor at Union High School and still hoping to obtain her master's degree in directing, education budget cuts made Jessica Davenport's decision to go back to school an easy one.
But before Davenport arrives at the University of Oklahoma in August, she's going to stage a Nightingale Theater production of Anton Chekhov's masterpiece "The Seagull" with a lot of help from her friends.
"A couple of years ago, I decided to re-read all of Chekhov's works, and I just fell in love with this play," said Davenport, 32, a graduate of the drama school at Oral Roberts University.
"So many of my college friends are also theater majors, and we always talk back and forth about things we're working on, and things we'd like to do, and maybe some time getting together to stage something."
Well, she talked with one friend, and that friend talked to another friend, and the end result is three of her friends who are working actors -- Andrea Akins and Brandon Burrell from Los Angeles and Nikki Durrant from London -- are returning to Tulsa to appear in "The Seagull."
"So we're having a little summer stock house, staying up late at night talking about old stories, our characters, discussing Chekhov," Davenport said with a chuckle.
A couple of former Union High School students as well as some with connections to the ORU drama department will also appear in Chekhov's most popular serio-comic drama (Chekhov insisted the play was a comedy, while its first director, Konstantin Stanislavsky, insisted on directing it as a tragedy).
"This is an adventure, and it's our first endeavor, and we'll see how the Tulsa theater audience receives us in this experiment," Davenport said. "We hope it's not our last endeavor.
Performances of "The Seagull" are slated for 8 p.m. Thursday-Sunday and continue with an 8 p.m. show July 3, both a 2 and 8 p.m. performance July 5 and a closing 8 p.m. show July 6. All performances are at the NIGHTINGALE THEATER, 1416 E. Fourth St. Tickets may be reserved by calling 583-8487 [As of February 2007, 633-8666].