The layered fabric of Renee Prince’s long pink skirt bunches and folds around her tiny figure as she sits cross-legged on the floor of the Willard Residential College Common Room.

She has one ear to the comments of her fellow “Bunny Bunny” cast and crew members and the other to a recording of a live performance by Gilda Radner floating from the CD player plugged into the wall beside her.

“She’s just so open to everything in the world,” says Prince, a Speech senior, of the “Saturday Night Live” comedian who she will play this weekend in “Bunny Bunny.” “I’ve really grown to respect Gilda through working on this play.”

Five years after Radner’s death from ovarian cancer in May 1989, her best friend, “SNL” writer Alan Zweibel, wrote “Bunny Bunny” as a way to grieve for Gilda and mourn her death, said Claire DePalma, the Speech freshman producing the show for NU’s Wave Productions.

With the help of 22 minor characters all played by Speech senior Matt Arigo, “Bunny Bunny” revisits the entire arc of Radner and Zweibel’s friendship, from their first meeting before an “SNL” cast meeting to their failed romance to Zweibel’s reactions to Radner’s illness and subsequent death.

“It all takes place in (Alan’s) head,” says Arigo, who plays everything from a cab driver to a bad waiter to a distraught woman. “I’m playing this guy in his brain who plays the third role all the time.”

DePalma, director Ellie Heyman and assistant director Martha Marion credit Dan Mahoney, who plays Zweibel, with bringing the play to NU. Mahoney first saw “Bunny Bunny” performed during high school at a forensics match.

“In just 10 minutes, it made me laugh and cry,” says Mahoney, a Speech junior. “I just thought it was really beautiful – the relationship that they had.”

At Mahoney’s urging, Prince agreed to play Radner. “I think he saw a lot of Radner’s sparkle in her,”says Heyman, a Speech sophomore who accepted Mahoney and Prince’s invitation to direct the show. “To me, this play is about connection. It’s about finding those really few special people in your life.”

Proceeds from this weekend’s five performances will go to Gilda’s Club Chicago, part of a national organization created after Radner’s death that provides social and emotional support to more than 1,100 Chicago-area cancer patients and their loved ones as a supplement to medical care. Zweibel published “Bunny Bunny” with the stipulation that all proceeds from the book and performances would go to Gilda’s Club, which was also the beneficiary of NU’s Dance Marathon 2000.

Because of Radner’s fame, Marion says that the cast faces a particular challenge in presenting Zweibel’s story.

“People come in with preconceived notions of characters and actors. We want to open a door for them to see into a person like they weren’t able to before,” Marion says. She adds that her own connection to Radner -formerly purely comedic – has grown on so many other levels through her work on “Bunny Bunny.”

Marion doesn’t get the chance to elaborate much more about this connection; the cast and crew are commanding her and Heyman’s attention as the break between runs comes to an end.

Prince, who has long since abandoned the “Live From New York” recording, almost is finished warming up for rehearsal as she dances past Mahoney.

Soon, it is Oct. 11, 1975, and the first episode of “SNL,” seen through the eyes of Radner and Zweibel, once again is being performed live from … the Willard Common Room. nyou