September 29, 2011

One-Act Festival - 2011

Thursday, Sept 29, 7:00pm
Friday, Sept 30, 7:00pm and 10:00pm
Saturday, Oct 1, 7:00pm

Our production year begins with a student-written-and-directed one-act festival we like to call SWADOAF.  The festival showcases the combined talents of the Introduction to Playwriting class (Th 275) taught by Associate Professor Stephen Weeks and the Directing class (Th 301) taught by Professor Stephanie Arnold.  The Playwriting class from Fall 2010 created a number highly entertaining, well-crafted short plays.   The directors from Professor Arnold’s class, after reading many of those scripts, chose three to produce:

Close To You

by Warren Kluber, ’12
Directed by Amy Wolfberg, ’12

A delicate balance between absurdity and realism, Close to You invites you to think about human relationships, our search for love, and just how essential it is to feel close to someone.

Brothers

By Riley Johnson, ’11
Directed by Chris Khatami, ’12

During the late 18th century, numerous re-ligious groups sought purity by fleeing the ur- ban world and settling on the fringes of frontier America; however, few survived to the modern day.  The Steiner family of Brothers lives in one of these settlements.  But as Brother Martin Steiner rushes to conceal his brother’s suicide, others use the tragedy to further their own desires.  Brothers gives its audience a glimpse at a pious society, awkwardly standing on its last leg.

Taxicab

By Corey O’Hara, 14
Directed by Nate Cohen, ’12

There is a Russian word, TOSKA, which can’t be directly translated in English, but it essentially means an ache of the soul, an unspecified longing or desire for something that is unat-tainable, but also undefinable.  The characters in this play are profoundly struck by this emotion.  They desire something more and something different than what they have.  Concerning one couple’s inability to communicate with each other, this play speaks to a struggle that is inherent in everyone’s life, in some way or another.