RU STUDENT'S DIET WAS STRANGE, BUT RESULTING PLAY WILL BE IN FESTIVAL

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, January 30, 1992                   TAG: 9201300184
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-4   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE
DATELINE: RADFORD                                  LENGTH: Medium
RU STUDENT'S DIET WAS STRANGE, BUT RESULTING PLAY WILL BE IN FESTIVAL
Craig Alexander Lyon says he wrote "New Moon in Golgotha" in six days on a diet of coffee, beer and canned spaghetti.
It must have worked. The student playwright's first produced play will be staged at Radford University today - one of six full-length plays in the regional American College Theater Festival, which Radford is hosting for the first time.
It is not a premier for "Golgotha." The play had a two-week run in October at George Mason University, where Lyon expects to receive his master of fine arts degree in poetry this spring.
But it should be a first for viewers - who will see the 24-year-old Lyon's play about nursing-home patients in a festival that also features works by Shakespeare, Chekhov and South African playwright Athol Fugard.
In addition, the festival will feature a University of Alabama production entitled "Southern Girls," about the lives of six women growing up in a small town outside Birmingham; and "Largo Desolato," a play by Czechoslovakian President Vaclav Havel about an intellectual pressured by his government to renounce his writings. "Largo Desolato" will be staged by the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.
Admission is $8 for the public and $4 for students.
Lyon, a burly young playwright with long hair and lots of ready conversation, said he conceived "Golgotha" after spending 2 1/2 years working at a nursing home. Struck by the insensitive treatment of patients by the staff, especially after visiting hours, Lyon wrote a play to convey the environment to the audience.
"They'll be unsettled by the end," Lyon predicted of his Radford viewers. "That's really all I want."
Lyon, who will perform as a patient in his play, said the plot revolves around a bet between two workers on which of the patients will die next. The play contains some uneasy humor - as when the character "Shiv" flips food onto the face of a patient - but no advice, he said.
"Golgotha" will be performed at 1 p.m. today at Radford's Porterfield Theatre. "Southern Girls" will be performed at 8 p.m. tonight in Preston Auditorium.
The plays will be judged on the quality of the performance, and one will be picked to go on to national competition in Washington, D.C., said Radford University theater Professor Carl Lefko.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB