There is an articel about our all-nite directing project in today's paper. It is as follows
The Tripod - Arts Issue: 11/2/04
Three a.m. Friday Night Theater Class
By Bailey Triggs
Last Sunday I received an unusual proposition. In less than one week's time the directing class, headed by Professor Mitch Polin, was going to attempt to perform Sartre's classic play "No Exit" over the course of one evening and they desperately needed actors. It's not surprising that I got asked to participate. How many people out there are crazy enough to sign on to participate in such an endeavor fraught with such obvious peril?
The plan was to divide up the play among the four students in the directing class, Vivien Boronyak, Kevin Keating '05, Emily Tucker '05, and Lauren Bland '05. Each student director would then be given his or her own cast and put the whole thing together between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. on Friday night.
While I had a little less than a week to prepare for my acting "debut," some participants in this project were even more unprepared for the experience than I was. Other seniors stepped in after last minute cancellations and Matt Jasilli '05 joined the project after receiving a cryptic phone message telling him his presence was requested at Seabury 19 from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m.
This project had little to do with "preparation" and everything to do with the experience of spontaneous creation. All the traditional expectations of what it takes to put on a show, like the actors knowing their lines, or having any theatrical experience for that matter, were of little consequence. For those of you unfamiliar with Sartre's "No Exit," let me give you a brief synopsis so you can see what we had to work with. The premise of "No Exit" is simple: it is about three people who are in hell. What is interesting about "No Exit" is the psychological and philosophical questions posed by the situation these three characters find themselves in.
For in Sartre's hell, there is no fire and brimstone, no little devil with a pitchfork, no physical torture devices whatsoever. In this play, "hell is other people." Each of the three characters in the play had been hand-selected to act as the torturer of the other two.
Somehow it's appropriate that we pulled a theatrical all-nighter on a play set in hell. It felt particularly fitting when 4 a.m. rolled around. After spending most of the evening working on our specific sections of the play, at around 2 a.m. we rallied to put the whole show together. After so much time working out our own scenes, it was really interesting to see what the other groups had come up with.
Boronyak explored the isolation of the characters by setting them apart in different corners of the room with spotlights providing a ring on the floor that the characters rarely crossed. Keating worked with the frightening aspects of hell by having his actors perform in the dark, turning on lights when each spoke. Tucker highlighted the Sisyphusian nature of hell by having her actors repeat certain actions, and Bland was able to brilliantly capture the sexual tension between the characters in her staging of the final section of the play.
Though we all had a better grasp on what hell felt like by the time 4 a.m. rolled around, I think most of us involved in the production found it rewarding in our own ways.
For me, it was great to dabble in theater again. It's an exciting thing to be able to have a hand in such a creative endeavor. If there is any moral to this story, I think it would be to accept the next unusual proposition you receive. You never know where it might take you.
