The Peace College Theater will open the season with "My Sister In This House" September 17, 2008.

Based on a sensational French murder in 1933, the play features Peace College students Johanna Coats and Heaven Gouch in leading roles. In addition to Coats and Gouch, PCT staff member and costumer Lynda Clark and guest artist Estelle Bajou from New York will also perform in the play. Peace students working on the crew are Solana Sparks, Lisa Hart, Travonna Riddick, Brittany Goodman, and Liz McDonald.

The play is directed by Kenny Gannon with design by Sonya Drum, Jenni Becker, Jeremy Allen and Lynda Clark. First-year student Meg Arrowood is the understudy.

The play runs Wednesday-Saturday, September 17-27 at 7:30 p.m. in Leggett Theater. Tickets for Peace students are free, faculty and staff tickets are $7.50. The play is Rated R for graphic violence and sexual content and is for mature audiences only.

About the play: When two maids, the Papin sisters, savagely murdered both the mistress of the house they served and her daughter in Le Mans, France in 1933, the crime caused a national sensation. Wendy Kesselman's 1980 play "My Sister in This House" focuses on the nature of identity as affected by disenfranchisement and what happens when normal human needs for connection and companionship, for intimacy and touch, for love and family, for the chance to make one's own way in the world and to improve are ignored and abused. The play was chosen for the season in large part due to the 2008-09 campus theme of "identity and transition."

Pictured above are Heaven Gouch and Lynda Clark as Isabelle and Madame Danzard, the two murder victims in "My Sister in This House".