On December 4, Wig & Candle, Conn’s student-run theater club, performed a collection of original plays in the Playwright’s Festival. In keeping with Wig & Candle’s identity as a student-run organization, each play was written, directed and acted by Conn students. The evening promised a multitude of dramatic stories and spirited students.
Upon walking into Olivia Hall in Cummings for the festival, nothing seemed too different for the event. The stage consisted of a few black chairs and wooden black boxes. A blackboard featured the words “Playwright’s Festival,” and the stage was more or less the way it has always been. A few minutes later, however, the once empty stage became the set for six unique plays, each giving the curious audience a glimpse into an unfamiliar world. Each actor or actress read his or her lines as if they had known them for weeks, making each character feel more real, and for some, more relatable.
Watching each play felt like switching between television channels — each one telling an entirely separate narrative — except the viewer wanted to watch each one until it reached its climax and subsequent conclusion. For many of the plays, the viewers seemed eager to see a second episode, or in the context of plays, a second act. Some plays told stories of love, like The Apple Orchard by Emma Weisberg ’16 and Rage by Julian Gordon ’14, while others honed in on female dynamics like Eva/Elena by Grant Jacoby ’13 and Two Girls, One Cup by Molly Clifford ’13. The audience watched comical and thought-provoking plays like I Love You, No, Seriously by Andrew Marco ’15 and Experimental Medical Treatment by Anonymous. The last play of the Playwright’s Festival, Sanctuary by Talia Curtin ’13, focused on a group of friends and their experience when one of them is diagnosed with leukemia.
Although the various plays could be divided by genre, their literary and theatrical elements equated them on an underlying level. Even though The Apple Orchard was primarily centered around love, its underlying tension between the two main characters, Harry and Celia, drew parallels to the bittersweet dynamic between Craig and Rose of Sanctuary. Also, both Gordon and Anonymous dealt with themes of forming unexpected, yet surprisingly, endearing relationships with strangers, both human and primate, as in the case of Experimental Medical Treatment.
Another interesting aspect of the Playwright’s Festival was that participating Conn students often exchanged roles, some directing one play while acting in another. This aspect of Wig & Candle gives Conn students the opportunity to experiment with different perspectives, allowing their projects to reach a deeper dimension. They each know the responsibility of another thespian. Exchanging roles also makes the Wig & Candle community stronger because one person’s efforts impact another’s; they want the respect to be reciprocated.
The tagline for the Playwright’s Festival, as shown on their posters featuring a group of friendly children playing on an outdoor playground, was “a place for play(s).” Appropriately so, the Playwright’s Festival and the hard work that went into producing this event, seems undoubtedly fun. Performing and directing new material allowed the actors, actresses and directors to develop unfamiliar characters while the audience witnessed Conn’s theatrical and literary talent.
Perhaps one of the greatest feelings in Olivia Hall that night stemmed from the actual playwrights. There is a certain thrill and feeling of excitement at hearing your own work spoken aloud with full emotion and movement. Laughter and other emotional exclamations from the audience are not written into the stage directions; they occur on the spot, making the experience of watching your own work all the more enjoyable. Hopefully, writing, acting in and then viewing the plays motivated the playwrights, actors and directors of Wig & Candle to keep on creating. For the Conn community, I certainly hope they do.
