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Dateline: 10/4/2007

GONZAGA UNIVERSITY NEWS RELEASE
Dale Goodwin, Director
Peter Tormey, Associate Director

Gonzaga U., Prep Students Collaborate to Learn

Associate Professor Brian C. Russo
Associate Professor Brian C. Russo,
The play’s the thing that united Gonzaga University and Gonzaga Prep students Friday, Oct. 5 in studying the classic Raymond Bradbury novel “Fahrenheit 451.” Prep students are reading the novel and GU students performed “Fahrenheit 451” as the University’s fall play that opens Friday, Oct. 19.

Brian C. Russo, associate professor of theater at GU, contacted Prep to see how the two Jesuit schools might collaborate in mutually beneficial ways. When he learned Prep English students were studying “Fahrenheit 451,” Russo knew there was a match.

Russo took five GU theater students to Prep Oct. 5, from 9:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., to present scenes in progress to the 40-some Prep students to help both groups deepen understandings of the novel and play. Prep students plan to attend the actual performance and have a “talk-back” with the Gonzaga U. student actors. Those five student-actors are: Aaron Moore, Katie Roth, Jason Meade, John Brummer, and Brigid Carey.

Russo calls the initiative “TIE,” which stands for Theater in Education, a field begun in England in the late 1960s in which dramatic experience is used to study any subject.

“The students reading the novel saw the characters they’ve been reading about and discussing come to life in a ‘rough’ form as they witnessed the rehearsal,” Russo said. “Then there was discussion between the students and our TIE team. The process is completed when the Prep students come see our play in performance, and then participate in the talkback (Oct. 18).”

The novel, written in 1953, and the play, written in 1986, are considerably different.

“The characters have the same names, but there are complex differences,” Russo said. “Bradbury definitely came at the play with the life experience of 33 years and the desire to do another F-451. So, the students saw the organic nature of art, to put it in fancy terms, but they experienced the difference as well.”

The show opens at 7:30 p.m., Friday-Saturday, Oct. 19-20, and Thursday-Saturday, Oct. 25-27, with 2 p.m. matinees Saturday, Oct. 20, and Sunday Oct. 28. All performances are open to the public and will be in Russell Theatre, located in the GU Administration Building. Tickets are $6 each for students, $8 for Gonzaga employees, and $10 for the public.

For more information, contact Russo at (509) 323-6551 or via e-mail. To purchase tickets, contact the Russell Theatre box office at (509) 323-6553.