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Erotic Encounters

There's nothing quite like the promise of several sexually explicit scenes to fill a theatre. Hello Again , the Department of Theatre Arts' first show of the season, keeps that titillating promise, but director Joel Rogers insists "this is not a show about sex."

OK, Joel. For the intellectual theatergoer then, Michael John LaChiusa's Hello Again is about searching for intimacy. "The characters are searching, but... they can only communicate through sexual activity, or sexual activity is the safest thing they know, and they use it to avoid real intimacy," explained Rogers.

For the veteran theatergoer, the critic, and the student of theatre, Hello Again is an erotic treatment of Schnitzler's La Ronde: each pair of characters consists of one from the previous scene, so that each character appears in two scenes. The circle is complete when in the last scene we see a character from the first scene. Hello Again has a seductive, dreamlike score that reflects the different time periods of each scene.

And for those with base curiosity and a simple desire to be entertained, consider the cast of characters: Prostitute, Soldier, Nurse, College Boy, Young Wife, Husband, Young Thing, Writer, Actress, and Senator. And consider that the soldier drifts into the nurse's scene and the senator ultimately hooks up with the prostitute.

Hello Again plays Sept. 30 - Oct. 5 in Wismer Theatre.