Student Playwrights' Festival and Triangle provide an evening of student-written work

What better way for a student-run theater to end a successful season than with a weekend of entirely student-written and performed work? That's how Theatre-Intime will end its season on May 11, 12 and 13.

In the midst of the craziness of reading period and finals, Intime will present two short, student-written plays, followed by — on May 12 and 13 — the Triangle Club's spring show, "Rude Olympics 2000: American Booty," which is a cabaret-type performance of original songs and sketches.

Strangely, this weekend devoted to student-written work owes its existence mainly to the extreme shortage of performance venues on campus. Following the great success of Triangle's spring show at Intime last year — the first of its kind — members of the club wanted to try a repeat performance.

However, when Triangle approached Intime, all the weekends were booked. As Intime tried to schedule the event, members resolved to play the two student productions and the Triangle show on the same weekend.

Still — though the Intime and the Triangle productions focus on student-written work — the shows will not be the same, as the processes and ideologies of the two shows are different.

The Student Playwrights' Festival provides a unique opportunity for student writers to see their full-length work performed. Many student writers applied to this year's festival in search of this rare opportunity. According to Adam Friedman '01, Intime's general manager, the Intime board received about 12 proposals for SPF, compared to as few as four in previous years. However, Friedman also noted that there has been increased interest in Intime this year, particularly from freshmen.

The Intime board chose two plays to present — "Hymns to the Moon" written by Bryan Walsh '01 and directed by Samara Abrams-Primack '02 and "Schadenfreude," written by Josh Boak '01, whose work is also being performed in Triangle's performance, and directed by Joann Sofis '00.

Both shows focus on four characters, though "Hymns to the Moon" has four supporting characters as well. In addition, both shows originated as pieces written for professor Robert Sandberg's playwriting classes. "Hymns to the Moon" was written for Sandberg's class this semester, and "Schadenfreude" was written more than a year ago.

"Hymns to the Moon" is set at the after-party of a college production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and, in the words of director Abrams-Primack "centers around four students . . . who find themselves intertwined in a love triangle . . . reminiscent of a Shakespearean comedy."

"Schadenfreude," the more comic fare of the evening — though Walsh's play also contains comedy — depicts the post-funeral gathering of a deceased's widow, son, mistress and minister and the events that arise from this unusual group.

Walsh and Boak differ greatly in their stage-writing backgrounds. Boak, a long-time writer for Triangle, has had his work performed several times — audiences might remember his satire of Agatha Christie's play "The Mousetrap" from this fall's Triangle show — while Walsh is an experienced fiction writer, though he has taken many classes with professors Joyce Carol Oates and Edmund White. However, he has never written for the stage before.

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Still, the two writers have a similar philosophy when it comes to having their work staged — a philosophy that can be summed up by the phrase "multiple perspectives." Comparing his experience with SPF to his creative-writing classes and student publications, Walsh explained that the immediacy of playwriting — watching the audience's reactions to his work — can be "pretty frightening." "Seeing people interpret what you've done is very humbling," Walsh said. He believes the feedback he has received has helped him improve his work.

In essence, Boak agrees, adding that Sofis' female perspective has helped him work through some difficulty with writing his female characters.

Like the writers, the directors of SPF are aware of the importance of collaboration. "It's a creative process for the actors and crew, as well as the director and writer," Abrams-Primack said. "It expands the actors' job."

She also observed that the process of producing these student-written works is, by necessity, quite different from staging more established plays — such as those Intime produces in its regular season — especially given the radically abbreviated production schedule for the festival. This year, actors, directors and production staff have less than a month from casting to opening night to put the shows together. "It becomes more about the process and theater itself than the final product," Abrams-Primack said.

Sofis also sees challenges in the short rehearsal process. However, she finds this setting and the one-act nature of Boak's play exciting because it allows her and her cast to focus on acting without a long, complex script.

Long complex scripts are also not a problem for the performers and director of the other half of the evening, "Rude Olympics 2000: American Booty." Triangle's part of the evening consists of short songs and sketches written by the Triangle writers' workshop, quite possibly the only other organization on campus that promotes student-written theater.

The workshop began a few years ago when Triangle moved the production of its annual original musical from the spring to the fall and needed to put up two shows in a short time period. The program was a great success and has now become a fixture as a subdivision of the club.

Every January, the professionals who run the program, Jay Kerr '67 and Robert Duke, accept submissions from aspiring members. Selection is made by the end of the month, and the workshop has its first meeting the first week of the spring semester.

Last spring, members of the workshop wrote so much material that the club decided to provide a setting where the material that might not fit into the context of the fall show could be performed. They put up the show at Intime during finals week, and in the wake of the banning of a certain midwinter tradition, the "Rude Olympics" was born.

The tradition continues this year with even more original songs and sketches written this semester by the approximately 15 members of the latest workshop and performed by a cast of nine undergraduates — five men and four women, all veteran Triangle performers.

The only non-student involved in the show besides Kerr and Duke is director Stephen DiMenna, a professional who works out of New York and who directed Triangle's 1997 production, "It's a Wonderful Laugh."

Like SPF writers Walsh and Boak, Eric Bland '02, Triangle's writing coordinator, feels the importance of seeing his work put on a stage. "The [writing] process is always wrought both with feelings of frustration and accomplishment. But seeing your material go up on stage makes those hours staring at the blank page more than worthwhile," he said.

With the wide range of style and subject matter covered by the two SPF plays and the "Rude Olympics," there is sure to be something to please everyone in the weekend Intime has planned. Plus, given the tough competition to get work into these shows, they promise to give a spectacular glimpse of the immense amount of writing talent on campus.