The upcoming ISU Theatre season is filled with a variety of productions, with some comedy and some drama.

Brad Dell, the department chair for music and theatre, said the first of the season will be the “25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” which is a fun contemporary musical with great music.

“It’s very funny, but it also touches on some, some, you know, important and thoughtful contemporary themes,” Dell said. “And so I think audiences will have a really great time for that.”

Dell said they have a great cast for this production, and they have a guest director.

“It’s being directed by guest artist Mary Jo DuPrey, who is an internationally renowned vocal coach,” Dell said. “She has been a vocal coach for Jon Bon Jovi when he is out on tour, as well as Daveed Diggs, who won the Tony for Hamilton, and renowned Broadway star Cheyenne Jackson. So we’re super excited to have her back to be a guest director for that production.”

Cason Murphy, assistant professor in the music and theatre department, said the show features adults playing elementary school kids and there is a lot of audience participation.

“The beginning of the show will bring up like half a dozen audience members who will participate in the spelling bee, but are given these incredibly ridiculously hard words so that they get filtered out so that the story can progress,” Murphy said.

Dell said the second production, titled “Fixing Troilus and Cressida,” is adapted by a company in Texas called the Rude Mechs.

“They specialize in taking some of Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays and reimagining the text for the modern era,” Dell said. “They’ve got a playwright in residence, and he rewrites them and puts in a lot of curse words and writes them to the times, and I’ve seen all of the productions and they’re really brilliant.”

Dell said this production will be directed by Cason Murphy, a scholar in reimagining Shakespeare texts for the contemporary era. 

“Troilus and Cressida” is set during the Trojan War. Murphy said this gives it an ancient feel.

“We’re trying to make it as contemporary as possible with this reworking of it, and students seem to be pretty excited about that,” Murphy said.

According to Dell, of the 80 people who auditioned, 10 will be featured in the first production, and 20 will be in the second.

Dell said the third production will be the Student Fringe Festival and auditions have not been held for that but there will be some held in February. 

“Students are going to [do] whatever they want to, their own works,” Dell said. “And so some of them are proposing to create short films. Some of them will be doing some short plays. Some of them are going to be doing some dance pieces and some musical theater reviews. It’s going to be kind of a cornucopia of student-driven and student-produced, dynamic work.”

Both Dell and Murphy said students practice Monday through Friday for three hours each day.

According to the website, the dates of these productions are as follows:

• “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” March 6 to 9
• “Fixing Troilus and Cressida,” April 17 to 29
• “Student Fringe Festival,” May 2 to 4

Furthermore, Murphy said the first two pieces are very vibrant and exciting.

“It’ll be an opportunity to see some really unique pieces of theater that I think will be really exciting for audiences,” Murphy said.

Dell mentioned that student admission is free, and community members can get tickets at Stephens Auditorium box office or Ticketmaster.

For more information on these productions, visit this website.