1 "It's about cultural diversity because the alien has a very hard time with all the distinctions human beings make about this race or that race, this gender or that gender, this culture or that culture. To the alien, we look more or less the same. "The play reminds the audience that the distinctions that we make between people are arbitrary. It's not as if the uni- verse is ordered in that way. We happen to impose that order on the universe." This will be the third time didn't arrive until I had actually fin- ished it." Spencer first knew he wanted to be a playwright in college, when he spent a term in London and got caught up in the city's expansive the- ater scene. After graduating from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., he worked in the literary department of the Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York. "I read a lot of scripts and learned about the business of production and playwrit- ing," Spencer says. "I worked with other plays, reading them, seeing them in production and figuring out what seemed to work and what didn't. After five years, I left to begin my own writing career, and I've been doing that for about 10 years." Spencer started with one-act plays and moved on to full-length scripts, putting a bit of himself into each character. "I think what I would do in a situa- tion if I were this other person," Spencer says. "In Resident Alien, the Michael character is a serious snob, and I can be like that. The alien, on the other hand, really understands something, which I hope I under- stand, about life and humanity, which ultimately is that life is yourself with other people, and it's love and com- panionship that are essential." Big Deal, Small Price. Ma zel Toy! Whatever the occasion - wedding, Stuart Spencer's "Resident Alien," a comedy-drama that won rave reviews at the Humana Festival of New American Plays, has its Midwest premiere at Jewish Ensemble Theatre. ci, Resident Alien has been pro- duced. JET artistic director Evelyn Orbach liked it immedi- ately when she saw it at the Humana Festival of New American Plays. She responded to the humor and the depth beneath. "It's a satire on hang-ups in soci- ety," Orbach says. "Jews have been alien in so many places, and this is a light-hearted approach to that kind of experience. It alludes to bigotry, and it pokes fun." While the playwright is new to JET, the cast includes some JET vet- erans: John Michael Manfredi ( Taking Sides, Unexpected Tenderness and Torch Song Trilogy), Jim Shanley (The Last Night of Ballyhoo, The Diary of Anne Frank and Unexpected Tenderness) and Scott Screws (The Last Night of Ballyhoo). The play is directed by John Siebert. The setting for Resident Alien is not unlike the small Wisconsin town in which the playwright grew up. "I didn't conceive of the play as a whole from its inception," explains Spencer. "The images came out of the image of a man and his son walking through the woods at sunset. The story of what happened to them in the woods, and all the ensuing drama and comedy, came to me as I went along. "I didn't know where the play was going as I was writing it, and I didn't know how it was going to end. Sometimes, I didn't know who was going to be in it; characters appeared without my really planning their appearance. The plot took certain twists and turns that were surprising to me, and the idea for the total play bar mitzvah, anniversary, or holiday - we have a great deal for you! For our low BounceBack. Weekend rate of just $69 per night, we'll PER ROOM PER NIGHT continental breakfast each morning, and fresh baked cookies each evening. 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