Inside a recently swept Black Box theater on Wednesday evening around 7:30, the dust has settled. Two students actors arrive and head to their dressing rooms.

It’s two days before opening night for , and Gavin Scheurch ’18 of Norwalk Conn., who plays Doug, is eager for the curtain to rise.

“My favorite part is going to be performing it for a live audience,” says Schuerch ’18, a dance major.

Karlsen and Schuerch, the lead actors in "Gruesome Playground Injuries," speak with director Keila K. "Kei" Ching '18 of Honolulu, while preparing for a speed-through, a very fast reading, of the play. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

Notes written by stage manager Zachary Jonas '20 of Needham, Mass., seen from the loft above the stage used for controlling sound and lights in the Black Box Theater. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

The silhouettes of Kayleen and Doug are seen painted on the wall during a dress rehearsal of "Gruesome Playground Injuries." (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

A horrifically injured Doug, played by Gavin Schuerch, speaks with Kayleen, played by Charlotte Karlsen. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

Keila K. "Kei" Ching, director of "Gruesome Playground Injuries," looks on during a dress rehearsal scene. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

Actors are always interested in audience reaction but this play is unusual. The play, by Rajiv Joseph, follows the “decades-spanning relationship of two made-for-each-other masochists who, between them, manage to slice, bloody, bruise and/or mutilate most parts of the human anatomy,” said The New York Times in 2011.

Schuerch’s favorite scene is when Doug vomits into a trash can to make Kayleen, who had hurled into the can herself, feel comforted.

Kayleen is played by Charlotte Karlsen ’20 of Portland, Ore., a double major in politics and rhetoric.

Gruesome is the first play of the �ֲ���ý season, so “we haven’t had a lot of time,” Karlsen says. “It’s been pretty intentional, purposeful, and focused work — really fun and exhausting as well as a great artistic endeavor and challenge.”

In Kei’s program notes, director Keila K. “Kei” Ching ’18 of Honolulu, a dance and theater double major, wrote that the play “initially resonated with me because it was about friendship that lasted and grew despite distance and time, similar to some of the relationships I’ve had in my life.”

On the eve of the play, Kei has second thoughts. “What I really want to say with this play is that it’s about vulnerability and having the vulnerability to expose one’s wounds to one another. I think that is the real heart of the show.”

Stephen Lattanzi

“I’ve always had a plan for myself,” says Stephen Lattanzi ’08 of Winchester, Mass. And ever since he performed in a production of Robin Hood in second grade, theater has been central to that plan.

At �ֲ���ý, Lattanzi has acted in eight stage productions, often in lead roles such as Angelo in this spring’s production of Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure”. One of two winners of a regional competition in the 2008 Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, he’ll compete at the national level in April.

“Steve certainly has the talent and the drive to make a go of it as an actor,” says Martin Andrucki, a theater professor who has directed Lattanzi. “He’s a pleasure to work with, because he’s so dedicated and so creative.” [More…]