“Oleanna” March 8 – 11. Tickets $12 in advance, $15 at the door.

A professor, a student, two lives forever changed. Oleanna” is a play so divisive, relevant and impacting that the playwright won’t allow any formal discussion of the work for two hours after the final curtain!

On March 8-11 at the Winter Street Church on 880 Washington Street, Studio Theatre of Bath takes on one of America’s most controversial plays, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Mamet’s “Oleanna”.

Twenty-six years ago, shortly after the infamous United States Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas brought the term “sexual harassment” into the national spotlight, Mamet wrote “Oleanna’.

At that time, “Oleanna” spa…rked sharp debate and divided audiences and it has continued to do so ever since. Mamet was decades ahead of his time and anticipated today’s headlines. The play is so in touch with current events and movements that it feels as if it was written a mere five minutes ago.

A powerful and thought provoking two-character drama, “Oleanna” is a play that centers around three meetings between a college professor John, played by Dennis Crews of West Bath and his student Carol, played by Letia Fowlie of Bath. The plot explores the dynamics of power in their relationship as student and professor leading to its ultimate and shocking climax.
This a play that will keep you on the edge of your seat, fully engaged and grappling with your own personal emotions as each viewer sees its unfolding events through the lens of their own experience.

In review, the Boston Globe declared that Mamet had “raised outrage to an art form.”
Take a look at what other critics have said over the years

“Oleanna” is likely to provoke more arguments than any play this year. – NY Times

Experiencing David Mamet’s play “Oleanna” on the stage was one of the most stimulating experiences I’ve had in a theater. – Roger Ebert

…it demonstrates so clearly how men and women can view the same events through entirely different prisms. – Roger Ebert

“He said it was a lesson. She said it was sexual harassment. Whichever position you take, you’re wrong.” – movie poster tag line
debating the meaning of this sexual bonfire of the vanities with the person you see it with is half the fun. — Rolling Stone

This play remains a barometer of what and how we communicate as well as the dangers of overlooking the simmering anger of the still disenfranchised. — Joyce Kulhawlik (wbur.org)

“But nothing gets up people’s noses more than Oleanna”. No one is neutral after seeing it, which is what good theatre is all about.” — Lynn Slotkin, Intermission Magazine