Written by Alfred Uhry, The Last Night of Ballyhoo was commissioned for the 1996 Summer Olympics. “The costumes complete the transformation of that other world the actors are trying to get to,” Jones said.

The padding rounds his shoulders, creates a potbelly and adds bulk to his clothes. He grew facial hair for the part, and costumes, makeup and stage lighting help turn him from a 22-year-old into a middle-aged man.Ĭostumer Dan Jones is using body padding to alter Svetlik’s frame. Svetlik also has help aging his appearance. “I watched how his arms moved and how he got from place to place, and then practiced in my apartment.” “I studied the way he walks and moves because I liked it and thought it matched with the character,” said Svetlik. To master his character’s physicality, Svetlik looked to one of his professors for inspiration. Third-year Acting student Robert Svetlik plays Adolph, a curmudgeonly bachelor in his 40s who is an uncle to the cousins.įor the part, Svetlik takes on a mature Southern dialect, one he imagines someone of Adolph’s age and location might have spoken with. “I also think that it may take a certain kind of play to make such a stretch doable.” “In professional theatre, as well as university theatre, it takes a certain kind of actor to pull off playing a person older than himself or herself,” Ingram said. But the audition process for the play identified a few talented young undergraduate students who he says trusted in their own acting abilities and accepted the challenge of playing older parts. In some instances, he said, older characters are played by faculty members or graduate students. “It’s safe to assume that very often, good plays are not selected to be staged at UCF because of the concern that the characters are simply too old for students to play believably,” said director Tad Ingram. The award-winning play was a hit on Broadway, but is rarely performed by university theatre departments because of the wide age range of its characters. The play follows two 20-something cousins and their family as the cousins juggle school, suitors and the Atlanta premiere of “Gone With the Wind” while preparing for Ballyhoo, a lavish community dance for Jewish families. The Last Night of Ballyhoo chronicles the story of an unconventional Jewish family in Atlanta in 1939.

University of Central Florida students are embracing the power of transformation as they prepare to make dramatic changes to their ages, speech and body movements for the upcoming Theatre UCF production of The Last Night of Ballyhoo.

The last night of ballyhoo