thePULSEBy Tine Roycroft
Remember the ex-girlfriend who continued celebrating your anniversary long after you two had broken up? Crazy! Or your friend’s boyfriend who dumped her butt via text? Stupid! Yes, love can be insufferable. Luckily, we have talents like Brian Tivnan and Jacqueline Carlson who seek to turn our pain into viewing pleasure… with dinner included!
“Crazy Stupid Love,” a dinner theater production that will be performed at Assumption College’s Taylor Dining Hall on November 17, 18, and 19, is sure to delight students and the general public alike with fabulous entertainers and fantastic food. This sensational night of fun is the brainchild of Tivnan, Assumption’s Visiting Instructor of Theatre Arts, and Carlson, a senior at Assumption who recently spent a semester studying with Second City. 
“Second City is a school that has prepared a lot of people to go onto ‘Saturday Night Live.’ It was a very comedy-intensive program,” Carlson says. “[Tivnan] and I had been talking about what we could do for the fall production that would incorporate many of the things I learned there. Originally, we were going to do an improv show or something similar to ‘Tony and Tina’s Wedding,’ but it was too much. So we thought about having an assortment of different scenes so we could have a lot of different people having big roles.”
According to Carlson, who will be assistant directing and producing the production, the show will feature a combination of scenes from plays, movies, and musicals that all have the underlying themes of comedy and relationships ~ scenes from My Cousin Vinny, When Harry Met Sally, Romeo and Juliet, The Boys Next Door and Chicago, to name just a few. And there will be exciting dance numbers, too, choreographed by Assumption College senior Kristen Ficorilli.
The dinner theatre aspect of the production is truly intriguing. Mike Ward, a general manager at Sodexo Food Services who works with the college, had suggested the idea to Tivnan and went as far as helping plan out the position of the stage and what might be served on the menu. The student performers will also be the waiters and waitresses who serve the multiple-course dinner.
“At first, when we told the students that they were also going to be serving the meals, they were a little hesitant,” Carlson laughed. “But then I was like, ‘We’ll get tips and let’s face it ~ we’re all poor and we like money!'”
At auditions for “Crazy Stupid Love,” Carlson was thrilled to discover how much talent they had to work with. With 30 parts to fill, the task of casting might have been overwhelming.
“But we were blown away by the talent!” says Carlson. “And all of these freshmen came to auditions and they were great. And that’s wonderful to keep the theatre program going.”
Once she graduates from Assumption, Carlson will be heading to sunny California to pursue sitcom writing. But before that, she’ll be playing Betty in “Sure Thing” and singing the part of Tzeitel in “Fiddler on the Roof” in “Crazy Stupid Love.”
Tickets are only $25 for a full dinner and show, and can be ordered through jchlapowski@assumption.edu. Check out www.assumption.edu for details.
Pictured: Cell Block Tango from Chicago with Kristen Ficorilli (‘12), Siobhan Bennett (‘12), Olivia Echteler (‘13), Marie Ebacher (‘13), and Katie Reynolds (‘12) | Photo by Jacqueline L. Carlson
