In 1984, students performed a specially-adapted version of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s The Bedbug. The play opens in Tambov in 1929, when Ivan Prisypkin, a former party member, is preparing for his wedding to the bourgeois Elzevira Renaissance. A fire breaks out at the drunken wedding party, and when fireman attend the blaze, they discover the corpses of all but one of the guests.
Fifty years later, Prisypkin’s frozen body is found in an ice-filled cellar in Tambov. After a Global Party vote, he is resurrected by a team of scientists. Under communism, however, the world is now a very different place, with love described as an “ancient disease” and beer an unfamiliar “toxic substance.”
The 1920s part of the production featured the cast dancing the Charleston, while the “future” setting of the play was moved forward from 1979 to the then present-day 1984.
The Cast and Crew of The Bedbug, including: Trevor Smith; Jonathan Bastable; Liza Lacy; Alan Thomas; Monika Sangl; Cynthia Marsh; Richard Cook; Heidi Collier and Andrea Thomas.