Dead Man's Cell Phone Knocks The Audience Dead

By Will Beals 

GW’s Department of Theatre and Dance opened its MainStage season Thursday night with its production of Sarah Ruhl’s 2007 comedy-drama, “Dead Man’s Cell Phone.” 

GW junior, Lauren Winters stars in this play about how memorializing the dead and technology changes us as a society. Dead Man’s Cell Phone is the odyssey of a woman forced to confront her own assumptions about morality, redemption, and the need to connect in a technologically obsessed world.  The production also stars junior Meghan Bernstein, junior Andrew Flurer, senior Same Game, senior Hilary Kelly and senior Lily Sondik. Theater professor Elizabeth Kitsos-Kang directs the show.

The cast delivers a moving performance, inciting laughs, gasps and cheers from the audience.

The local Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company originally performed Dead Man’s Cell Phone in 2007. Since then, Ruhl’s dramatic comedy has been performed throughout the country.

Tickets are still available for the final performance of the production, scheduled for Sunday at 2:00 PM. General admission is 15 dollars, with a discounted student price of 10 dollars.

Ticket reservations are available online at theatredance.gwu.edu, by calling (202) 994-0995, or by visiting the box office prior to the performance. The box office is located next to the Dorothy Betts Marvin Theatre, on the first floor of the Marvin Center and will open at 1:00 PM.

Following Dead Man’s Cell Phone, the Department of Theatre and Dance’s 2013-2014 season continues with five other productions including Twelfth Night (opening Oct. 31), Absurdities: An Evening of Ionesco (opening Feb. 20), The Cradle Will Rock (opening March 27), and two faculty, guest artist, and student choreographed DanceWorks (opening Nov. 14 and April 17).