Author: Linni Kral
The Oxy Theatre Department’s 11th annual New Play Festival took place last weekend, Feb. 19-23, in Keck Theater. The festival showcased screenplays by student writers that are then directed and acted by members of local theater companies. The scripts are either put on as a staged reading or a workshop performance.
The festival was produced by Laural Meade, adjunct assistant professor in the Theater department, and by student Courtney Dusenberry (senior).
The schedule began with a staged reading of “The Rotten Apple” on Thursday night, written by Alex Marshall (senior). The following day, there were workshop performances of “Dodo Birdie,” written by Daniele Manzin (senior), and three short plays about strangers: “We’re Going to Have to Ask You to Check Your Dignity” by Emme Geissal (senior), “The Race” by Caitlin Anderson (senior) and “Unchained” by Dusenberry.
On Saturday at 4:30 p.m., there was a staged reading of two plays about ghosts: “Haunted” by Sara Roberts (junior) and “All We Have is Now” by Sarah Garza (senior). Most of the shows were performed multiple times throughout the weekend and admission was free.
Alex Marshall wrote this play in Professor Meade’s script writing class during the Fall ’08 semester. The play follows a family of four siblings, Adam, Lynn, Zola, and Lee Jr., and their widowed father, Lee Sr., on a camping trip to bond with their father’s new girlfriend, Patty. Over the course of the hour-and-a-half staged reading, Marshall reveals the rich emotional complexities of the family, while instigating laughs that shook the crowd on a consistent basis.
Midway through the performance, Patty is revealed to be conspiring to get Lee Sr.’s money in a divorce settlement, lending the piece a The Parent Trap meets Heartbreakers feel. The script paid homage to the politics of Occidental and California, referencing Barack Obama and Proposition 4. The political references come in when the youngest sibling, Zola, thinks she is pregnant. Her older sister, Lynn, comforts her saying that they will drive to a state that doesn’t require parental notification for abortion as soon as the camping trip ends.
Although the reading had rehearsed twice, this was Marshall’s first time seeing it in front of an audience. He no doubt appreciated the audience’s big laughs during the before-dinner grace, “I love food, I love meat, I’m fucking hungry, so let’s eat,” sung by the inebriated youngest brother, Adam.
The performance also featured more serious scenes, including the heartrending climax when Lee Sr. informs Adam that he was an accident and Adam punches him in response.During the question and answer session that followed, Marshall and Meade both remarked that Patty’s character would need to be played with more dignity in the future. “If you judge your characters, you’re sunk,” Meade said.
After the play, Marshall revealed that he’d written the script after writing a manifesto in Meade’s class; the manifesto made him realize that family is the principle belief he wanted to focus on. The script is loosely based on his own family dynamic and father, who was in the audience on opening night.
After seeing the performance, he remarked that the next rewrite would include earlier relationship development between Adam and Lynn in order to justify a series of serious talks and arguments later in the play.”It was really great,” he said, “and I would hope that one day it really can be a full production.”
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