By Katie Schleiss
For the first time ever, students at UP will be able to have live readings of their play scripts. The plays will be read on April 22 and 23 at 7:30 p.m. in Mago Hunt Theater.
This is the first annual play festival and six undergraduates will be performing and directing the plays they wrote.
Theater professor Andrew Golla said that the intention is that everybody from the community can participate, not just those people who are already involved in the theater program.
Theater professors Andrea Stolowitz and Golla have organized this event. When teaching and writing plays, the second half of the equation is having some sort of performance opportunity, Stolowitz said. There are plans for future events because it is a necessary part of education that can't be separated, Stolowitz said.
"We're not writing these plays for the sake of writing them, but to see each other's work instead of studying a dead playwright that we'll never get to meet," Golla said. "This has been some of the most exciting work, it's all brand new and we can develop it into something to be performed in front of an audience."
Although many colleges offer playwriting, Stolowitz said that an inherent part of this is having them performed for an audience.
Golla said that the University has just started to get the playwriting program off the ground and plans to add more classes.
"It's necessary to teach play-writing while having an outlet, like these performances," Stolowitz said. "This makes an opportunity for students to see their works."
The readings will be theatrical and will not be performed with props and the plays range from eight to 20 minutes in length.
The theme for all of the plays is 'cosmic happenings,' Stolowitz said.
Golla said that the topic of cosmic happenings was chosen to give everybody something to write toward while still leaving room open for interpretation. He said that this gives the playwrights something to do while they are looking at a blank page.
Golla said that what makes this event unique for the University is that everything from this event comes from UP students, including writing, directing, and presenting.
"We had one reading last weekend and took notes to begin revising the plays and working with the actors and director with the play for the reading," Stolowitz said. "The plays were all unique, interesting and funny."
Junior Patrick Rexroat wrote a play titled "Gears, Mirrors, and Shimmering Beams of Light."
He said that it's based on an incident that a friend of his had working at K-Mart. He ran into two bounty hunters in the same day, and Rexroat tried to put a cosmic spin on it.
Rexroat said that the University really didn't have a playwriting class until now and said that he's really glad that he had a chance to take it.
"Hopefully, the event is successful this year and happens again next year," Rexroat said. "I'd love to be a part of it again, it's been really fun."
Graduate student Rico Nan's play is "Cosmic Bastard" and it's about two souls who love each other very much. Over the last 100 years, however, they have been having some problems.
Nan said that this play takes a look at relationships and the concept of soul mates at a greater cosmic scale, but placing it in a context that's a little more pedestrian.
Nan said that he's always found the idea of reincarnation intriguing from a spiritual standpoint and it's one of the major themes of the play.
"I wanted to do something about that, so I pulled some stuff out of my own life as inspiration," Nan said. "Cosmic Bastard" is a romantic comedy.
Nan said that he plans to do this event again and that it's a good outlet for developing material.
"I am a playwright and having this on campus is a great opportunity for those interested in working and developing a script," Nan said. "The focus is on helping writers develop their pieces to a point where they can experience what a production might be like and they can hone their scripts and fix what they discover through the process and clean it up."
Nan said that by seeing what the process is like, playwrights could get their scripts to a point where it could be performed with a full set, costumes and lighting.
Nan said that he started working on his script last semester, but it just kind of fit into the collective theme of cosmic happenings. He developed the play further in playwriting class.
Sophomore Andrew Lyon is writing a play titled "Like Father, Like Son," and he said that it's about interesting relationship dynamics that go beyond an ordinary reality.
"It takes you from one reality to another in a new and surprising way that calls in to question why one might perceive situations in certain ways," Lyon said.
Lyon said that the festival will be full of great plays and the works of the other writers inspired him. He said that there are wide variety of creative ideas and genres.
Lyon started writing every day in high school as a personal outlet. He said that his love of language leads him to passionately pursue diversity in his writing.
"What's so great is that I've never had my writing taken to this level before, and now I have the opportunity to do that," Lyon said. "Like an architect designs buildings to be constructed, I get to work with words and watch them come to life."
