The Red and Black

Issue date: 4/16/09 Section: Out & About

Media Credit: ALLISON CARTER Mary Denise, played by Hope Vance, checks the vitals of Joy, played by Kailey Rhodes. [Click to enlarge]

The University's own English professor, Dr. John Vance, is bringing a taste of Broadway to Athens in the form of "SNOW," a Snow White parody.

"I love fractured fairy tales of all kinds," Vance said. "This idea started seven years ago in a fit of amusement. Finally, last year I went back to it after pecking at it for several years."

Put on by the JV (John Vance) productions, this play consists of six actors playing 11 different roles, as well as two rehearsal assistants and a stage manager.

Characters mirror those in Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," including Snow Weiss (a.k.a. Snow White) a brainless Broadway ingénue, Joey Cacciatore (the hunter), a wicked stepmother, and seven OAFS (dwarfs).

"I pick my own casts," Vance said. "The play is a straight parody and follows the story as it is told. The only deviation is the stepmother has a lover."

Even the names in this pun-filled play are parodies.


"Cacciatore is an Italian hunter and oafs stand for Outcast of Atlantic and Flatbush Streets, which are streets in Brooklyn, New York," Vance said.

"I play three characters really. One is just one of the 'kids' or chorus running throughout the show. The second is Joey Cacciatore. He is the fellow in the play who is supposed to kill Snow Weiss for the evil step-mother," said Stuart Ivy, manager at the College of Veterinary Medicine and staff council president.

"The third is Will. He's one of the seven OAFS, constantly sneezing and coughing. He is perennially (W)-ill."

"I play Joy, the character who parallels Happy the Dwarf in the original Snow White," said Kailey Rhodes, a junior from Macon. "This is my first 'fractured fairytale' and my first onstage moment in Athens, although I've been in productions in Macon, Ga. and Greenville, South Carolina."

Continued...

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