Cornell premieres student’s play, ‘Peach Blood,’ in December

MOUNT VERNON — “Peach Blood,” a play by a Cornell College student about the eventful life of a woman trying to chart a future independent of a haunted past, premieres Friday, Dec. 8, in Cornell’s Plumb-Fleming Studio Theatre in Armstrong Hall.

The play continues Dec. 9, 14, 15 and 16. All performances are at 8 p.m.

Holli Gipson, a senior English and theater major from Fort Worth, Texas, has written a script “alternately funny and chilling, and always painfully human,” says director Mark Hunter, chair of Cornell’s theater and communications studies department. The play follows Nancy, 29, living with dysfunctional parents who obsess about ancient situation comedies and the sex life of Marilyn Monroe. She works for a struggling gay artist, and she has encounters under a mysteriously indestructible peach tree with her sister who has been missing for years.

Gipson started work on the script in fall 2005 after completing a playwrighting class at Cornell. Personal experiences influenced this work of fiction, including conversations she’d had with friends about Marilyn Monroe, and the peach trees in her grandmother’s yard. When a knee injury sidelined her for the Cornell basketball season, she continued work on the play while recovering from surgery. Director Hunter quickly embraced the production for the Cornell stage. “Peach Blood” is the first student-written work chosen for the theater department’s mainstage season.

“It is most unusual for a first playwriting effort by an undergraduate student to receive this level of production at any institution. Holli will likely be making playwriting waves in years to come. We are delighted to celebrate this signal achievement by one of our own,” Hunter says.

Gipson, who intends to pursue graduate studies in playwriting after a two-year Peace Corps stint in Africa, says, “It’s a great feeling to see it come to life.”

To reserve tickets for “Peach Blood,” call the box office at (319) 895-4293 or go to www.cornellcollege.edu/theatre/box_office/. Admission is free to Cornell students, faculty, staff, emeritus faculty and retired staff. General admission is $8 for adults and $5 for students, seniors and youth.