Apr. 11, 2008 – The University of Utah’s Department of Theatre will produce faculty playwright Tim Slover’s award-winning historical drama, Treasure, April 17-20. The play was awarded the 2006 Christopher Brian Wolk Award for Excellence in Playwriting, a unanimous selection from among 700 entries. In connection with winning the award, Treasure was given a staged reading at the Off-Broadway Abingdon Theatre. Treasure also won the Fulton Opera House’s award for Best Play of 2004.
The play received its world premiere in 2004 as a commission of the Fulton Opera House in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It dramatizes the tense and explosive political events which swirled around a sex scandal involving the nation’s first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton. “Playwright Tim Slover, in his wonderful new play, Treasure, makes these…details very human and intriguing,” stated a review in Lancaster New Era.
“It’s really the past in the present tense,” Slover notes. “Hamilton was taking the nation in an entirely new direction, and the old guard resented it. They couldn’t defeat his ideas, so they did everything they could to destroy him personally.”
Slover’s other plays include Joyful Noise (Pioneer Memorial Theatre, Off-Broadway Lamb’s Theatre) March Tale (Seven Angels Theatre, CT) and Lightning Rod (Fulton Opera House). He directs the playwriting and London study abroad programs for the University of Utah’s Department of Theatre.
Treasure is directed by actor training program faculty member Peder Melhuse, with a scenic design by new technical director Kyle Becker. Melhuse is a highly regarded professional director and actor with numerous stage, TV and film credits, including Red Betsy, Wayne’s World, Hill Street Blues, and The Wraith. Prior to coming to the University of Utah, he directed the undergraduate and graduate acting programs at the University of Alabama. Becker has designed and constructed projects at Disneyland and Orlando Repertory Theatre and has taught design and technical theatre at the University of Central Oklahoma and the University of Central Florida.
Performances are Thursday through Saturday, April 17 through 20 at 7:30 p.m. and matinees at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, April 19 and 20 in the Studio 115 Theatre in the Performing Arts Building, just west of the Campus Bookstore. Tickets are $9 general admission, $5 students and are available through Kingsbury Hall ticket office, 801 581-7100, http://www.kingsbury.utah.edu/ (click on “Performances”).