By Erin Furman
Robert David MacDonald’s 1974 play “Camille” is set to make its American debut at the Black Box Theater in the New Academics Building this weekend.
With six scheduled performances over the next two weekends, the dance and drama department has been working all semester to develop and complete this rarely-seen play. Twenty-three actors and 35 crew members have been working with director James Kolb, a professor of drama, Rachel Pearl, a senior theater major and the associate director, and the stage manager, Rory Levin, a sophomore theater production major.
MacDonald’s “Camille” has had only four previous documented performances, one in Glasgow, Scotland in 1974, and three in Canada. It was performed in Vancouver, Canada in 1979, and at the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada in 1981 and 1982. To date, this version of Camille has never been performed in the United States.
According to Kolb, MacDonald’s “Camille” is a much more “realistic” version than its predecessors, Giuseppe Verdi’s 1853 opera, “La Traviata,” and the 1936 film, “Camille.”
In the play, Camille is a highly-paid courtesan who is the mistress of both an elderly French Baron and an old Russian Grand Duke. She is dying of tuberculosis and seeks to redeem her name, reputation and health by leaving Paris with a young man with whom she has fallen in love. However, because of a large scandal, Camille sacrifices her love and returns to Paris. There, her lover publicly humiliates her by throwing a pile of money in her face.
Ally Stock, a sophomore theater major, likened the main character to a “whore with the heart of gold,” a fixture that has inspired films such as “Moulin Rouge.” Unlike the happy endings in “Moulin Rouge” and “La Traviata,” in which Camille’s character and her lover are reunited just before her death, MacDonald’s “Camille” tells a darker, more realistic tale that does not romanticize what Kolb called “the wild jungle of Paris in the 19th Century.”
The version of “Camille” to be performed at the University is rarely seen because it simultaneously combines scenes from the play, the opera and the movie. “It is unusual to have opera singers available for a stage production,” Kolb said.
Most previous productions played recorded versions of the music while the actors lip-synced. The 13 female and 10 male University students that make up the cast will perform the music live.
“It is a very large stretch for undergraduate students to be performing it,” Kolb said. “It asks the actors to present some strong sexual content, strong language and a violent death scene-not things often asked of student actors.”
“Camille” will be performed Friday, Nov. 30 and Saturday, Dec. 1 at 8 p.m.; Sunday, Dec. 2 at 2 p.m.; Friday, Dec. 7 and Saturday, Dec. 8 at 8 p.m.; and Sunday, Dec. 9 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $10, with one free ticket for every valid Hofstra ID.