People listening for some new voices need not go any farther than the Arena Theatre. The showcase “New Voices” opens Friday night.
The two student-written one-act plays make up the performance. The scripts won last year’s annual short play contest held by the University.
The short play contest is open to all students at the University who wish to enter. Scripts must be no longer than an hour in production and must require minimal design and tech work to produce.
“Speaking Through the Flowers,” was written by Jenni Hellesto, who graduated last year with a degree in theater arts. This is actually not the first time her script has been staged; she directed it last year in the Pocket Playhouse. But directors Elizabeth Helman and Eric Lewis, both graduate students, have taken Hellesto’s show further than was possible in the Pocket Playhouse because of the increased budget and flexibility with the space.
“Our production is very different from hers,” Helman said.
The one-act is set on the wedding night of a young couple who have gotten married after knowing each other for only a week. When the show was produced in the Pocket Playhouse, there were the two speaking actors and also two people who represented shadows of the characters. These shadows would engage in a kind of dance/pantomime during important parts in the script.
Helman and Lewis have extended the idea of shadows and added one more for each character, creating a cast of six. Also, the directors have divided the script so the shadows actually take over the dialogue of the two main characters at times.
“The shadows represent all the pieces in us that make up our past,” Helman said.
Lewis explained that when the show was cast, the script was not yet divied up among the six actors. The exchange of lines developed as the directors began to understand the strengths of the actors.
“It was a very organic process, the way the actors came to their parts,” Lewis said.
An organic process was also used in the other one-act, “Ewen,” but in a different way. Unlike Hellesto, the playwright of “Ewen,” Rowan Morrison, is still a student here and was able to work with the director, graduate student Rich Brown,during production.
Brown said that this has allowed him some freedom with the script, which has actually been changed in the process based on decisions made between him and Morrison. In this way, the script has been almost custom tailored to showcase the actors’ interpretation of their roles.
“For both of us, it’s been our first opportunity to work with the director and playwright during the process,” Brown said. “But, we’ve been very careful to give an accurate portrayal of Rowan’s work.”
This one-act production revolves around a psychiatrist and one of his patients. The patient possesses some mystic ability and ends up switching the roles of who is helping and who is being helped. Brown said that in the end, it deals with the danger of people handing out answers to complex problems in neat little boxes.
Like “Speaking Through the Flowers,” “Ewen” externally represents the inside of the characters, but instead of using shadows, “Ewen” uses the set.
“Nothing in the set is complete, to reflect the inner state of the characters,” Brown said.
“New Voices” runs today, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $4 for University students and are available the EMU ticket office or at the Arena Theatre in Villard before the show.