The Actor’s Co-op is currently showing the play “Proof.” The show is about Catherine, a 25-year-old woman who has spent the last five years taking care of her mentally ill father, a former math genius who has just died. She sacrificed her own college training in math to care for him, possibly losing her chance to follow in his footsteps.
Hal, one of Catherine’s father’s protégés, has come to search for anything of mathematical value in the many notebooks full of gibberish that Catherine’s father wrote during his final waning years of insanity. This invasion of the study upstairs in the home Catherine shared with her father is just an added stress to her as she worries about her estranged sister Claire, who is flying in for the funeral, and battles the idea that she might go insane as her father did.
Much family drama and sexual tension culminate in the finding of a profound proof in one of the notebooks. This proof will revolutionize math; the question now, though, is who wrote it? Catherine claims authorship, but Claire and Hal are skeptical. Who wrote the proof? Is Catherine losing her mind? What is Hal’s motivation in all this? In this intriguing and funny play, the answer is not clear until the last lines of dialogue.
“Proof” is directed by Charles R. Miller, a first-time Actor’s Co-op director and theatre professor at Pellissippi State. It stars Jenny Ballard as Catherine, Sarah Campbell as her sister Claire, James Francis as Catherine’s father’s protégé and Jacques DuRand as Robert, Catherine’s father.
The cast of the play consists of many Actor’s Co-op veterans. Campbell’s credits with the company include Kaylee in “Measured in Labor: The Coal Creek Project,” Lenny in “Crimes of the Heart,” Maude and Betty in “Cloud Nine” and Francis and Rhonda in “Office Hours.”
DuRand has played Joshua/Gerry in “Cloud Nine,” Moon in “The Real Inspector Hound” and Cheswick in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Francis was also featured in “Office Hours” and the annual cabaret.
The performance also features UT undergraduate in theatre, Elizabeth Hendrich, as its stage manager and UT master of fine art student, Jeff Meyer, as the lighting designer. Hendrich is a two-year alumnus of the Actor’s Co-op Apprentice Company and is now a full-fledged company member. Meyer’s work was seen last year at the Clarence Brown Theatre in “Sing Down the Moon” and “All the Way Home.”
“Proof” is very popular right now. It was done as a studio project in the Clarence Brown’s 2003-2004 season, and it has been made into a movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Jake Gyllenhaal, Hope Davis and Anthony Hopkins, which is set to be released Sept. 16.
Theatre advocate and All Campus Theatre officer Sarah Corzine enthusiastically endorsed the show. “It was really, really good. I shall sing its praise on the mountaintop.”
Proof is playing Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. at the Black Box Theatre on Homberg Drive. The show is $12 for students, seniors and the military and $16 for general admission. All tickets are half-price on Thursday nights. Tickets are available at the door or by calling the Actors Co-op at 909-9300.
