Sexy satire steals the stage

Students of the UCF Conservatory Theatre experienced the lightning-fast pace of professional acting during Summer B, managing to have a world-famous play ready for audience approval in three weeks.

Love, Sex and the IRS, which was originally written by Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore in the late 1970s, was performed for the first time at the university's Black Box Theatre July 7.

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According to Christopher Niess, director of the UCF Conservatory Theatre, the globally recognized play has been staged more than 1,000 times worldwide.

"It was quite difficult and rewarding at the same time to present this play," Niess said. "The short summer allows us to have a more dynamic schedule, but that also means less time to practice. This is what the schedule of professional actors is like."

The comedy tells the story of two unemployed male musicians living in New York City who have been filing tax returns as a married couple in order to save money, until an agent of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) goes to investigate the marriage.

According to Niess, Love, Sex and the IRS is a farce, which is a comedy that uses crude and sometimes vulgar humor, containing a theme of mistaken identities and other ridiculous plot twists. It also moves at a frenzied pace toward a climax and requires an actor's full attention and a great deal of physical stamina.

The time constraint also meant less time to assemble a production and design team, which was responsible for organizing play components such as lighting, costumes, and sound.

This sort of play could have proven difficult for the cast in the short amount of time they had to practice, and some of the eight UCF student actors involved had never acted in one before.

"Farces are one of the most difficult plays to learn because they are so fast paced," Niess said. "You can't do a farce and slow down all of the reactions, slow down all of the motivations of the actors, or else the audience gets bored."

To freshman criminal justice major and play attendee, Danielle Barnes, the actors performed their roles with no signs of inexperience.

"The acting was flawless," Barnes said. "It seemed as if they weren't even actors but rather people that happened to be themselves on stage."

This was Barnes' first time watching a UCF play, and what captivated her attention the most was the acting, she said.

The cast included professional actor Jason Nettle, an acting graduate student at UCF and member of the Actors Equity Association, who returned from New York City for this production.

According to Nettle, one of the most difficult aspects of the play was working with actors not familiar with the pace of farces. He also cited the challenge as one of his favorite parts of the experience.

"Having people on a stage having to figure out the intensity of movement and organized chaos is not easy, but the process is fun and rewarding in the end," Nettle said.

Nettle said that, as a professional actor, playing his role reminded him how acting is a constant learning process in how to become more comfortable with complex characters.

Love, Sex and the IRS will run from July 7-17 on Thursdays-Sundays. The shows will begin at 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and at 2 p.m. on Sundays.

To purchase tickets or for ticket information, call the box office at (407) 823-1500 or visit the website at http://theatre.ucf.edu.