Enter the world of melodrama — as it was really done — in School of Drama’s ‘The Two Orphans’

"A villain with a black cape who twirls his moustache and leers at a victim tied to the railroad tracks — this is what most of us think of when someone says melodrama. But that’s just a caricature of the form, says Jeffrey Frace, who is directing the School of Drama’s production of the melodrama The Two Orphans, which opens next week.

"'Melodramatic is a derogatory term these days because it’s come to us as a synonym for bad acting,' says Frace, an assistant professor at the school. 'But that’s a misunderstanding that I think has come via bad imitation of an external form without really knowing where it came from.'"

By Nancy Wick. Read the whole story in UW Today, April 23, 2009.