This weekend, 13 students from the Theatre course ‘Directing’ will cap off their semester with a festival of 10-20 minute one-act plays. As their final project, the class members individually selected a one-act piece, secured the rights, cast, rehearsed, designed and directed the play.
“One-acts in general … [are about] how we build relationships as human people, how we relate to one another, how we mess with those relationships and how we ruin them sometimes, but also how they can be saved or healed,” said Lauren Sheely ’14.
The students’ plays have been divided into two groups and the groups will run their shows back-to-back. The first group, Joe Kloehn ’14, Hutch Freeland ’14, Deb Tillman ’14, Jarrett Thompson ’14, Teddy Hoffman ’14, Cedric Hakeem ’15 and Youngbin Song ’15 will perform Friday, Dec. 6 at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, Dec. 7 at 2 p.m. Sheely, Kate Loftur-Thun ’14, Heather Guy ’14, Cristal Coleman ’15, Ian Saderholm ’15 and Ebony Chuukwu ’16 will perform Saturday, Dec. 7 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 8 at 2 p.m.
“It’s nice because it isn’t too much of an investment, time-wise … it’s not like Hamlet where you sit in the audience for three hours. There are varying styles of plays that you are going to see. It will be a little weird but the flow will be interesting. You’re getting a lot of styles all at once. It’s going to be more of [a] panache than the normal plays that have one storyline,” Freeland said.
The plays are an opportunity for class members to showcase the results of their theoretical and practical investigation into the responsibilities and techniques of directing in the theater. Taught by Craig Quintero, Theatre, the class started in an avant-garde style of examining image-based pieces to develop the mood of a play before actually reading the content. The class is highly discussion-based—examining what has worked and what hasn’t—which allows students to workshop and form powerfully meaningful pieces with their actors. Quintero emphasizes the final lasting image that remains with the viewer, whether for the night or a lifetime.
“Quintero is a professor who always pushes you to go further … a professor that will catch you [slacking off] and get you to work harder,” Freeland said.
It is hard to know what to anticipate at a One Act Festival with titles like “Beer Girl,” “I Am Not Batman” and “Land of the Dead.”
“It’d be best if you come in without any expectations, really. … Just let us take you to places,” Song said. As there is no ticketing for the show, it is first-come first-serve basis and space is limited to 47 seats.
