Life > October 11, 2007

By Meg Smith | Staff writer

Senior theater majors and members of the Black Box Players, Amber Chapel, Sissie Strope and Tiffany Waddell will direct the sole Studio Series this fall.

The three student-produced one act plays will be performed at 7:30 p.m Oct. 15 and at 4:30 p.m. Oct. 16 in the Ring Theatre.

Strope has chosen to direct the retro bildungsroman Glory in the Flower by William Inge. Waddell will direct a compilation of two intensely soulful works from The Love’s Fire Collection: 140 by Marsha Norman and Hydraulics Phat Like Mean by Ntozake Shange. Chapel will direct the forcefully expressionistic Silence by Harold Pinter.

Waddell’s synthesis of 140 and Hydraulics Phat Like Mean, plays inspired by Shakespearean sonnets, will take the audience to the haunting, raw worlds of emotions stripped bare.

The first seductively explores the beginning of a romantic relationship through music and dance.

The second captures the wrenching voices of lovers anguished by infidelity.

“My plays are about intimacy, and the costs of taking the negative versus the positive route,” Waddell said. “They’re really abstract combinations of surrealism and expressionism. I’m infusing dance into my pieces — there’s a strong sense of poetry.”

A different rhythmic lyricism infuses the overlapping monologues of the characters of Silence.

“Silence is about three lonely people that are in a love triangle and the loneliness and isolation they feel,” its director, Chapel, said.

“I think it’s about the enormity of things that go unsaid,” Strope said.

Employing the most traditional and realistic narrative of the three plays, Glory in the Flower follows the reunion of two childhood sweethearts, Jackie and Bus, in a Midwestern bar decades after their last meeting. According to its director, Strope, the play is fundamentally about maturation.

“It juxtaposes youth with the past, but isn’t at all nostalgic,” Strope said. “It’s about (Jackie’s) relationship with herself, and the immense amount of transformation that takes place inside of her when she finally finds herself after 20 years.”

Personal discovery is a theme that especially resonates with Strope, Chapel and Waddell this year.

“It’s our senior project — we’re learning through it,” Waddell said. “Not to sound cliche, but we’re learning about ourselves.”

The circumstances surrounding this specific series are atypical in several ways.

Usually there are three studio series in a semester, and the other senior majors help the directors with the projects. Chapel, Waddell and Strope have been challenged in that they are the only seniors to present a Studio Series this fall.

“It has been more limited this year (without more senior theater majors). We’ve had to pull from the same pool of designers, the same pool of actors. We’ve really had to work together to make sure it’s cohesive,” Chapel said.

Each senior has been working on this project since last December, when they chose their plays to direct and produce They cast the show two weeks before the first performance.

“I don’t think it’s to be taken lightly that we each only have 14 rehearsals in the same space in which to put up three shows,” Waddell said. “We’ve been analyzing it for a long time, but once it finally arrived, we hit the ground running.”

“There’s an immense amount of anxiety and pressure associated with the Studio Series. “It’s like jumping off the deep end,” Waddell said.

“This series is also unusual in that none of us are actors,” Strope said. “Tiffany is a writer and a director, Amber has primarily worked with lighting and I’ve focused on set design and artistic elements. The directorial role is completely new and exciting for me.”

The three women spoke about the powerful dynamic that has risen between them during the process.

“We’ve been inseparable throughout this project,” Chapel said. “We’ve had the same schedules, we’ve been dealing with the same issues, we’ve cooked dinner and problem-solved and stayed up late together.”

“We’re three smart, powerful women,” Waddell said.

The students stressed the importance of continuity of audience. “All of our shows are so different, it’s necessary to stay for all three,” Waddell said “The audience should expect a totally different experience with each one. We chose these plays because we have feelings about the bare shows themselves that we wanted to express. We feel our plays, and we really want other people to feel them too.”

The performances, the culmination of almost a year’s work and four years of experience on the part of the seniors involved, promise to be well worth one’s time. Tickets can be purchased at the door for $2.