Author: Lena Smith
Can you imagine seeing your writing performed on stage? How about by professional actors? In the 15th annual New Play Festival, sponsored by Occidental’s Theater department, six students experience exactly that.
“It’s for the writer to see their work performed by actors,” theater and history double-major Emily Abbott (junior), the festival’s student producer, said.
Abbott is responsible for organizing all of the students involved with the festival, including student-actors and the stage managers. She works closely with Professor Laurel Meade, the faculty producer who takes charge of the professional side.
Fifteen years ago, Meade created the New Play Festival in its existing form out of its precursor, which was an entirely student-run festival. Currently, any Occidental student may submit an original play. A group of professors in the Theater department then selects five or six of these plays.
“We pick plays that are most ready to go into the rehearsal process,” Meade said.
Next the department hires professional directors to collaborate with the student playwrights. Together they choose actors, drawing both from L.A.’s professional community and from Occidental’s student actors, according to Meade.
Each play has two to three rehearsals and a tech rehearsal. Theater students have the opportunity to gain experience as stage managers or to experiment with basic lighting and sound design, according to Abbott. However, non-theater majors are welcome to join in the festivities.
For the writers, the festival is a creative endeavor and a learning process. They receive feedback and mentoring from their directors and often from their actors. Each play goes through a few drafts before the final performance.
This year the playwrights are seniors Kristin Easton, Giulia Davis, Robert Lundgren, Mandi Bossard, Shanequa Hammock and first-year Brian Erickson.
For Easton’s play, “Back to Broadway,” the festival serves as only one step in creating the finished product. The play fulfills her senior comprehensive project, so even after it is performed, she will continue to perfect it, according to Abbott.
The rehearsal process for “Flush,” a comedy by Lundgren, which combines somber reflection and toilet humor, began with discussion of the jokes. The jokes have been refined with the help of his actors and the director, Joe Chandler ’01, giving Lundgren the opportunity to hone his comic voice.
Chandler returns to the festival this year, having participated in Meade’s first as a writer. He has a successful career as a writer and performer regularly appearing at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade and writing for Fox’s animated adaptation of Napoleon Dynamite.
“Many of the writers who have gone through the festival are currently working professionals,” Meade said.
Erickson wowed the crowd with a moving family drama he wrote during his senior year of high school. Christina Crittenden (sophomore) was the star in the role of Claire who is the older sister of a brother suffering
from Chromes disease, played by first-year Will Stupp. The play revolves mostly around the relationship between the siblings, who bond despite their parents’ divorce and their personal troubles by watching movies together.
Giulia Davis’ play starred three actors but only Lily Jackson (sophomore) was an Occidental student. The play is about two women in a mental hospital trying to avoid having their brains jiggled and re-arranged with an ice pick. Jackson played Susanna, a character with a sweet Southern twang who says she has powers, such as the ability to put a man to sleep by kissing him (which she later proves). One of the funniest moments of this play occurs when the doctor practices this procedure on grapefruits, and Susanna screams, “I am not a grapefruit!” It is a shutter-island mystery where realities are encapsulated within realities like the mystery of Russian dolls.
All of the plays were well-received and the writers and actors had the opportunity to work on their art. Meade hoped that many people would attend the festival.
“The other half of the process is the audience,” Meade said.
The festival is all about new voices, whose work can only be realized through the energy and feedback of an audience.
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