Rock and Roll at TCR

TCR - Romance, rock music and Czech history will all be on display when Theatre Cedar Rapids presents Rock ‘N’ Roll, the award-winning play by Tom Stoppard, beginning Friday and continuing through Oct. 25.

Presented as the first half of Theatre Cedar Rapids’ Linge Series, Rock ‘N’ Roll will be performed at the theater’s temporary location of TCR Lindale, 4444 1st Ave. NE (across from Lindale Mall).

Rock ‘N’ Roll covers two decades between the Prague Spring of 1968 – when Soviet tanks are rolling into Czechloslovakia – and the Velvet Revolution of 1989.

“Living in a community that is so steeped in Czech history and culture, the Czech history was the first part of our attraction to doing this play,” said director Leslie Charipar of Cedar Rapids. “But I was also intrigued by a community theatre attempting to perform Tom Stoppard, who is notoriously complicated. I was really excited by the challenge of covering more than 20 years worth of history on stage.”

Rock ‘N’ Roll features two key characters: Jan (played by Kehry Lane of Iowa City), a young Czech student who is opposed to his country’s regime; and Max (played by Steve Arnold of Vinton), a professor at Cambridge University.

“Oddly, it’s not the massive history and debate that I think is the best part of this show,” said Charipar. “Those things are terrifically interesting, but it’s Jan’s discovery that Communism doesn’t work, that it threatens the very thing he cherishes the most – rock and roll and the freedom it represents.

“And even more poignant is Max’s story,” Charipar added. “Max is a man who’s dedicated his entire life to the ideals of communism, only to discover at the end of his life that he might have been wrong. I think that’s amazing and devastating.”

Stoppard frames the action with music of the time from artists including The Beatles, U2 and The Rolling Stones.

“span style="font-style:italic;">Rock ‘N’ Roll won the London Critics Circle Award for Best New Play, and was on Broadway less than two years ago. Its author has won both Tony and Academy Awards, with titles to his credit including Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Arcadia, Shakespeare In Love and The Coast of Utopia.

“There’s no doubt about it, Stoppard is a tricky playwright to tackle,” Charipar said. “But that’s the fun of it: The challenge."

To aid with that challenge, actors in Rock ‘N’ Roll have been working with Dr. Libor Prager, a visiting professor from the Czech Republic currently teaching at Mount Mercy, on everything from dialect to history to culture and behavior.

Tickets to “Rock ‘N’ Roll” are $20 and $25 for adults and $15 for students, with $12 rush tickets at the door available one half hour before each performance. Tickets are available online, by calling (319) 366-8591, or by visiting the box office in the Grant Wood House, 800 2nd Ave. SE.

For more information, visit www.theatrecr.org. And check out a behind the scenes video here.

(Photo by Steve Eckert.)