Mark Cofta’s theater picks: Students star on the Philly scene

November is a busy month for college productions, and the Philadelphia area offers many options. Young student actors receive valuable experience in these productions, but they're often directed and designed by professionals. College productions are typically unusual play choices with larger casts than professionals can afford — and ticket prices are very reasonable.

The end of the world — or something like it

At Villanova Theatre, Barrymore Award-winning actor and playwright James Ijames directs Jose Rivera’s post-apocalyptic drama Marisol (November 8–20). Written over 20 years ago, Marisol predates today’s fascination with stories about civilization’s fall. Brooklyn is a war zone, coffee is extinct, the moon has disappeared, and angels are armed with machine guns in this adventure about a girl just trying to get home.

Though not post-apocalyptic, Peter Weiss’s The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Clarenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, known as Marat/Sade (November 9–16) invites us into a similarly chaotic world. Sociopaths and schizophrenics portray the bloody French Revolution in this large-cast mind-blower at Temple Theaters. It's not the end of civilization, but certainly conjures it.

Bryn Mawr College productions are always worthwhile theatrical adventures. Sarah Ruhl’s 2003 fantasia Eurydice (November 11–19) is a modern retelling of the classic Greek tragedy Orpheus, but from his wife’s point of view. Barrymore Award winner Catharine Slusar directs.

A remount and award-winning collaborators

Drexel University’s Mandell Professionals in Residence Projects teams a professional company with students every year. Their collaboration with Inis Nua Theatre Company is a remounting of director Tom Reing’s 2011 hit Dublin By Lamplight (November 9–20). Michael West’s play imagines the Irish National Theatre's tumultuous birth in 1904 Dublin, using commedia dell’arte and storytelling techniques.

Arcadia University's theater program produces a four-play season, including this month's Picnic (November 10–20), William Inge's 1953 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, directed by actor, playwright, and professor Kathryn Petersen.

At the University of the Arts, Barrymore Award-winning director Matt Pfeiffer directs Sam Hunter's Pocatello (Nov. 10–19), a 2014 drama by the acclaimed writer of The Whale, which Pfeiffer directed for Theatre Exile last season. Pfeiffer won last year's Barrymore for Director of a Play for The Whale, and this year's for Exile's The Invisible Hand.

Short runs

Sometimes great shows appear only for a night or two, like the Automatic Arts revival of Josh McIlvain's SLIDESHOW (November 4, 5, 11, and 12 in four different venues), his fictional family saga created through old Kodachrome pictures that has played in living rooms and galleries as well as theater spaces.

Revolution Shakespeare teams with the Hear Again Radio Project for two performances of Orson Welles's Mercury on the Air adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (November 6 and 7 at the Physick House). It's a lean cutting (down to 65 minutes), which directors Darin Dunston and Griffin Stanton-Amieson will present as Welles did in 1938, with live music, vintage foley sound effects, and a small cast vocalizing all the roles. The play's political themes fit nicely with some little event occurring on Tuesday.

The Philadelphia Theatre Company, with Missing Bolts Productions and the University of the Arts, sponsors After Orlando (November 21), a reading of short plays written in response to the Orlando tragedy. The show's 16 plays, each three to five minutes long, include works by Philadelphians Jacqueline Goldfinger and MJ Kaufman. Admission is free, but donations will benefit Pulse of Orlando.

Above: Automatic Arts's SLIDESHOW doesn't happen in typical venues. (Image courtesy of Josh McIlvain)