"... a brisk and silly industrial-age comedy that "exults in every cliché" - NY Times  "Below the Belt is many things, and all of them good!"  - New York Magazine critic John Simon "Hilarious!" - CATF, West Virginia

Dreaming of promotions and going home, these three corporate types play out a farcical game of shifting alliances as they try to "get ahead" in a system where the predators, both real and imagined, seem to lurk around every corner. It’s funny, silly, fanciful, whimsical, darkly amusing…well, lets just say we like it.. a lot!

Below the Belt is a play that addresses the quandary we face in trying to preserve ourselves in the face of the forces we have to bend to. It is a play that provides not only a window into an unnamed corporation but a window into corporations everywhere, and the relationships within them. It addresses men specifically, and the dynamics that exist between them. It is both humorous and profoundly sad, and it touches a place inside audience members that they may have long ceased being conscious of.

Centenary College journalism student, Julia Kimball, interviewed playwright Richard Dresser recently in his home in Los Angeles. The following are excerpts from that interview: 

Below the Belt is a humorous play - a "corporate comedy" in which the characters vie for one-upmanship in a corporation that is never named. Michael Sommers of the Star-Ledger called the play, "a mean, keen comedy about a snarling trio of corporate number-crunchers going for the groin." It is about three men in a work situation that is not physically realistic, but that is starkly accurate emotionally. And it is more than that. It came from something that moves and disturbs Richard Dresser, the playwright - it came from "the deep loneliness that separates men."

Dresser has been quoted as saying, "I've had occasion to work at a series of jobs ranging from a plastics factory where I made GI Joes' thighs. . . to Hollywood, where I wrote sitcoms. . . These two jobs were remarkably similar - welcome to the workplace." Something that moved Dresser in his work experience was how men work together and don't work together, especially in the face of the rules that box them in - the issues that are the meat of Below the Belt.

Dobbitt, the character who is the newcomer at the company, is the audience's window to the meat of the play - the window to the ubiquitous corporation, and the checkers' emotional responses to it. The corporation has a lot of rules, and there are a lot of forces at work. Dobbitt has to figure out those rules; and how to survive within the boundaries they set. Dresser said that "A lot of what the play is about is how people have to figure out how to be human when they have to conform. . .. how to be human and an individual."

Dresser grew up in Holden, Massachusetts, and attended Brown University. He has been interested in writing since college, and began writing plays in his late twenties. The plays he writes stem from things that disturb him or move him in some way.

"Plays really come out of very specific types of things," he said, adding that he sometimes starts out not knowing how he feels, but figures it out through the process of play writing. Dresser says that his plays are personal. Not only do they grow from something very personal in him, but they touch something very personal in their audiences. That is why he says that he "doesn't even presume to speculate what people should think" when they see them.

This applies to Below the Belt, a show that he says is especially personal in that the subject matter encompasses profound things we all deal with in terms of conformity and loneliness. Dresser says it is funny "in the way that we look at the horrible things that we have to deal with."  

Cast:

CSC's production reunites funny-men Kevin Carolan, Alan Lewis Rickman and Carl Wallnau, whose humorous escapades in the production Laughter on the 23rd Floor at the Forum Theatre were a favorite of New Jersey audiences. 

Allen Lewis Rickman*

Off-Broadway: A Klezmer's Tale, Tony 'n Tina's Wedding, Theda Bara and the Frontier Rabbi.

Regional: The Foreigner (Virginia Stage), Laughter on the 23rd Floor (Charlotte Rep and Forum Theatre), his co-written farce Off the Hook (Forum Theatre and Oldcastle Theatre), The 1940's Radio Hour (Emelin Theatre), Arsenic and Old Lace (Blowing Rock Stage), Kiss The Bride (Theatre Fest), Guys and Dolls (Flat Rock Playhouse) and Funny Money (Pirate Playhouse)

Television: Michael Moore's "The Awful Truth", Buck Henry's "Are We On?," " Law & Order," "Kwik Witz." Mr. Rickman was an Artist-In-Residence with the lamented Manhattan Punch Line Theatre, and is pleased to be making his Centenary Stage debut.

Terry Withers*

Terry is very pleased to be working with the Centenary Stage Company for his first time. Most recently he was seen as Oliver in Purple Boulevard Production's 13th Ave and as Floyd in The Baobab Groove's production of I'm Okay. Terry is excited to be in a play of Mr. Dresser's again. The last play he performed while in attendance at Penn State was Mr. Dresser's one act At Home.

Carl Wallnau*

Carl Wallnau has just returned from the National Tour of the Broadway musical, Titanic. He is the producing director of the Centenary Performing Arts Guild, as well as an associate professor of Theatre Arts for Centenary College.

His recent credits also include Noises Off and Death of a Salesman at Paper Mill Playhouse, La Vatch in All's Well that Ends Well, and Antipholes in the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival's production of Comedy of Errors, and Charlie Fox in CSC's production of Speed The Plow. He has worked in numerous regional theatres, including Forum Theatre, Second Stage, Pennsylvania Stage Company, Asolo theatre, Crossroads and American Stage Company, as well as the Papermill Playhouse.

Directing credits include the CSC production of Scotland Road, the NJ premiere of Marvin's Room, as well as critically acclaimed productions of Pygmalion and Springtime for Henry. He has also been featured in rip Torn's GHOST STORIES for the UPN network.

Carl received his MFA from Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts. He currently resides in Hoboken with his wife and favorite actress, Colleen Smith Wallnau.

Directed by:     Carl Wallnau*

About the Playwright:    Richard Dresser

Richard Dresser is probably best known for the television series The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, where he served as a writer-producer, HBO's Vietnam Stories, Bakersfield P.D. and more. His stage plays include Below the Belt, produced in New York City in 1996, starring Judd Hirsch and Robert Sean Leonard, and the plays Gun-shy, Alone at the Beach, The Downside, Better Days, Bait and Switch, The Road to Ruin, Bed & Breakfast, At Home and Splittsville. Other work for television includes HBO's Vietnam War Stories and Bakersfield P.D., Public Morals and Smoldering Lust. He currently resides in Los Angeles, but has his eyes on a home back East!

Behind the Scenes:

  
* member of Actor's Guild                                       

www.centenarystageco.org           boxoffice@centenarystageco.org
400 Jefferson Street, Hackettstown, NJ 07840       908-979-0900
Copyright © 1999-2007 Centenary Performing Arts Guild. All rights reserved.
Revised: January 3, 2007