Performing a Pulitzer Prize-winning play is usually the pinnacle to which a college theater group aspires — unless, of course, the award-winning playwright attends the performance.

That is the plan for next Thursday’s opening of Beth Henley’s dark comedy, “Crimes of the Heart,” to be performed by the School of Theatre and Dance at McGinnis Theatre on the East Carolina University campus. Henley is scheduled to meet with the cast and sit in the audience during their performance, a rare and somewhat intimidating opportunity made possible through the effort of English Department professor Tom Douglass.

Henley’s “Crimes” plot centers on the 1974 reunion of three sisters, Babe, Lenny and Meg Magrath in post-Hurricane Camille Mississippi after Babe shoots her abusive husband. Each of the sisters has a distinct personality and a different bag of emotional rocks to carry.

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