For the first time since March, the UO theatre department is buzzing in preparation for a new production. After almost a year of exclusively live-streamed performances, the department will present “Personal Game,” a live theater experience directed by John Schmor and centered around MFA candidate Ashley Baker’s costume designs.
“It changed the department this year because we were expecting to have nothing,” Baker said. “But instead, we have people in the costume shop. I hear the seam shop working below me right now. It’s almost like there’s a sense of normalcy.”
The showcase, set to original music by Orchestra Next, will feature eight performers wearing costumes inspired by the relationship between player and character in role-playing games.
Baker’s designs were inspired by the work of scholar Sarah Lynn Bowman, who theorized that there are eight different types of relationships that players of role-playing games have with their characters. Baker aimed to represent these types of intrapersonal dynamics in a fantastical way without defaulting to traditional fantasy genre imagery. Instead, the costumes are dreamy abstractions of these ideas. One costume adorned with jagged, abrupt edges represents the concept of “fragmentation,” while “devoid” appears to be amorphous, without any harsh lines at all.
“I didn’t want people to see fantasy archetypes when they looked at this,” Baker said. “I wanted them to see the essence of these ideas.”
The showcase is a part of Baker’s capstone project for her master’s in costume design. Typically MFA candidates design costumes for a show in the UO theatre department’s season, but because the original season was canceled, Baker and her mentor, professor Jeanette deJong, developed an alternate way for her to present her capstone project.
They approached Professor John Schmor, who specializes in avant-garde theater, to direct. He proposed that the project be a sequence of short presentations for a small group of people to ensure the safety of the audience members and performers. “Personal Game” runs only 15 minutes and will be presented for a group of no more than 12 people at a time in Hope Theatre. There are no lines and there is no plot. Every component of the project serves to highlight the costumes.
“It’s a very unusual theater performance, because all of the emphasis is on design — not just Ashley’s costume design, but also set design and video projection design,” Schmor said.
Schmor worked with music professor Brian McWhorter and Orchestra Next musicians to produce music based on each costume.
Since March, the theatre department has performed exclusively over livestream. “Personal Game” is the first project that will be presented live. Baker said that students coming back to the department have told her that it feels so good to have something to do. The project had more of an effect on the department than she anticipated.
“I’m really proud of everyone who’s been involved in this project. I didn’t expect it to go as far as it did, and to reverberate in this department the way that it did,” said Baker.
The production of “Personal Game” may be one of the final steps for Baker to complete her MFA, but it is also a representation of the way an artistic community can overcome prohibitive circumstances to collaborate and share their art. The performing arts are likely to continue to be challenged until the pandemic is over, but projects like this demonstrate the resilience of artists.
“Because of this project I was able to bring a little bit of hope back to this department. And I’m really glad I did that,” Baker said.
“Personal Game” runs Jan. 29 through Feb. 6, and tickets are free.
