Actor Chris Sarandon Returns to WVU for Staged Reading

Notable actor and Beckley-native Chris Sarandon will be in Morgantown this week presenting a play to the public, for free …about physical and sexual abuse.

The play Not Someone Like Me is a collection of monologues about the real experiences of physically and sexually assaulted women, and how they deal with life afterwards. Sarandon explains, it’s meant to be read and performed to benefit rape crisis centers. He’s been working for several years with his friend and the playwright Susan Rice to develop the show.

“Susan actually approached me and said, I’d love for you to direct this. I said, ‘Oh Susan, shouldn’t it be a woman?’ And she said, ‘No, actually, the audience of the play should be men,’” Sarandon remembered.

This week’s readings at West Virginia University will be the college premiere of the show. Sarandon is the first College of Creative Arts alumnus to take part in the college’s new Alumni Residency Series, during which alumni of the schools of art and design, music, and theatre and dance are returning to work with students. The cast will include students and faculty members from the School of Theatre and Dance.

The staged readings will take place Sept. 18 and 19 at 7:30 p.m. in the Creative Arts Center’s Antoinette Falbo Theatre. Following each performance, Sarandon and the cast will also take part in a “talk back” with the program coordinator for WVU’s Sexual Assault Prevention Program.