ONE NIGHT ONLY!


The Rambling Nut
A Story of Cancer and Survival

created and performed by Eric Love





Tuesday, September 22, 2009
7:30 p.m.
BDA Tucker Theatre

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
No advanced ticket is required.


The Rambling Nut is a true story: a whirlwind solo-performance piece about an uninsured college student's fight against testicular cancer in the late 1980s. This impatient patient attacks his cancer and the bureaucracy that surrounds him with a cynical sense of humor, an exuberance for life, and a love for Black Sabbath. Moments of hilarity are punctuated with tragic struggles, causing audiences to both roar and weep as our hero grapples with cancer, the public health system, and the emotional roller coaster that is college. Even twenty years later, his scars bear witness to the battle. Visceral, veracious, and psychedelic, The Rambling Nut bridges the gap between taking the punches thrown at you and fighting all the way.


About Eric Love

Dr. Eric Love was born and raised in Southern California, fleeing to attend college at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. After earning his BA in English, he moved to Austin, Texas. Enrolling in the graduate program in Theatre Arts at Texas State University in San Marcos, he earned an MA in Theatre History and Criticism. During this time he discovered his love for directing, and worked on over eight shows. After graduating he moved back to Austin and directed a theatre company called Bent Spectacles. In three years they produced over seven shows, disbanding when Love decided to enter the PhD program in Theatre at the University of Missouri. At Mizzou he directed seven shows—five for the Theatre department’s season: an unprecedented feat for a graduate student. His directing credits included WIT, his own adaptation of Euripides’ CYCLOPS, ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD, and MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM for the Missouri Symphony Society. He had several acting and lighting design credits as well. He also created a one-man show, THE RAMBLING NUT: the story of his battle with testicular cancer as a college senior with no health insurance. THE RAMBLING NUT has been performed around the country in numerous and eclectic venues over the past several years, including the WordBRIDGE Playwrights Lab, the Northern Plains Performance Festival, and Grand Rounds at Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas. His dissertation, THE WOUNDED STORYTELLER IN PERFORMANCE, broke new critical and theoretical ground by analyzing autobiographical narrative performance as a type of Oral Tradition. He was hired in 2003 as Assistant Professor of Acting and Directing at the University of Missouri-St. Louis to help create a new Theatre, Dance, and Media Studies department and a new BA degree in Theatre and Dance. He then moved to Houston, Texas in 2006, where he worked as a freelance director and actor—particularly in voice-overs. He was also on the faculty of the Institute for Spirituality and Health: teaching classes in performance at the Texas Medical Center to medical professionals and students. However, missing teaching in the traditional college environment, he accepted a position heading the Theatre and Speech program at Tennessee Wesleyan College, returning to Tennessee after some twenty years absence. Dr. Love has over sixty theatre and performance credits, including acting, directing, design, and playwriting. He has presented over 16 workshops, panels, and/or papers to national conferences on a wide variety of topics. He is most well known for his work in autobiographical personal narrative performance and new play development. Love resides in Athens, Tennessee with his wife Karen, his daughter Iris, and two cats and a fish.