�ֲ���ý Theater’s production of Everybody sold out every performance at Gannett Theater last week — waitlists at the door, eager audience members finding out they’d gotten seats  five minutes before curtain — and the room earned that anticipatory urgency. Associate Professor of  Theater Courtney Smith, the scenic and projections designer, built a world that wrapped around you rather than played in front of you. It was immersive and a little disorienting, in exactly the right way.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ 2017 play, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, takes a risky leap of faith in inviting its cast into a game of role swapping. Before each performance, the cast members playing “Somebody” draw lots to decide who plays Friendship, Cousin, Kinship, Stuff, Everybody. The �ֲ���ý production also added a few other roles to the lottery, Strength, Beauty, Mind and Senses.

All these different roles, memorized by everyone and shared by the whole cast, could lead to dozens of different possible versions in any given production. The performance you witnessed would have been the only time it happened exactly that way.

Director and Associate Professor of Theater Tim Dugan shaped an ensemble that held that strangeness without flinching. For Adam Joseph (AJ) Matos ’26 of Springfield, N.J., and Noah Skinner ’26 of Sugar Land, Texas, the play was part of their senior theses, working with a cast that had to be ready for anything. As lighting designer, Skinner lit a world that had to feel ancient and urgent at once. There were many big questions on hand, including the nightly guessing game of who would play who? The answer? Everybody.

The cast includes: Mo Al-Jabry ’28, Graham Austin ’28, Aidan Bergeron ’27, Julian Boutin ’28, Jack Fisher ’29, Connor Gerraughty ’26, Josie Kim ’27, Jenny Liu ’29, Emily Maffezzoli ’29, Samantha Manogue ’26, Ruby Marden ’27, AJ Matos ’26, and Patrick Stronski ’27.

The following were also involved in the production: Costume Designer & Director — Rebecca Armstrong; Associate Costume Designer — Marcel Nagy ’28; Sound Designer — Emily Duncan Wilson (Brandow Family Fund Guest Artist); Associate Directors — Kate Norry ’28, Nicole Rossilli ’27, Elaine Wang ’27; Stage Manager — Sarah McOsker ’28; Associate Stage Managers — Queenie Tsang ’28, Colin Kenny ’28; and Associate Projections Designer — Evan Cox ’26.

The contrast in titles alone ought to tell you something.

On the one hand, there’s The Seagull, Anton Chekhov’s late 19th-century play, a tale of art and romance, striving and frustration, ripe with unexpressed thought and feeling.

And on the other, there’s the response: a stripped-down, soul-baring, fourth-wall-breaking 2013 play by Aaron Posner: Stupid F**king Bird.

Tim Dugan, assistant professor of theater, first saw the latter a few years ago in a production directed by Posner, at Philadelphia’s Arden Theatre (which the playwright also co-founded).

Director Tim Dugan, assistant professor of theater, prepares for the play’s March 4 dress rehearsal in Schaeffer Theatre. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“I was immediately blown away,” says Dugan. “I was like, ‘I really want to direct this someday.’” And someday is now, as Dugan is directing the play’s �ֲ���ý premiere, .

Bird, Dugan says, “is very funny. The wit, the irreverence, the human folly — kind of like Chekhov — make it funny. Audiences tend to laugh a lot at these characters who are striving for something that is unattainable, because I think we see ourselves in that.”

How will this play speak to your students?

Four of the seven characters are younger, in their early 20s, and so it’s perfectly aged for our students. Also, the stakes and urgency of the scenes for these young people in the play are enormous. It’s really something you can sink your teeth into as an actor. It’s a great challenge.

Posner wrote something in his script acknowledgments that I was drawn to. He hails “all the fierce, fervent young artists who seem to be connecting with the passions, fears, frustrations, needs, hopes, and longings of the young artists of this play. Chekhov was really onto something! Keep striving. Keep discovering. Make better things! Make things better!”

Sukanya Shukla ‘20 portrays Nina. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

That, to me, is huge. For our students, I feel like this is an inspired call, and I want them to embrace this, because we all know, right now, the world is a challenging place.

This, to me, breathes life into hope and into that idea of making things better. He’s talking to young artists who will effect change, and that is a great entry point and connection to students today.

Why did The Seagull need a contemporary adaptation? Or did it?

I think it did. There’s a challenge in doing Chekhov today — it does feel a little musty at times. From what I’ve read about Posner, he loved Chekhov’s play. It was very inspirational to him, a play about a young playwright trying to find a voice and footing in this creative world. I mean, it is really hard to find success as an artist.

David Garcia ‘20, playing the character Dev, performs a duet with Becca Kraft ‘20 as Mash. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

So, I think there was a part of Posner that always felt attracted to that play, but then he was also frustrated and upset by boring productions or certain interpretations of it. What he has done is to bring The Seagull into the 21st century. It has breathed new life into people’s awareness of Chekhov.

Do we need to know The Seagull to appreciate Posner’s play?

If you haven’t read The Seagull, you will totally follow this play. If you have read The Seagull, there are a lot of delightful nods to Chekhov, and you’ll just enjoy it all the more.

This is a raw, gutsy play, and that’s what Posner’s known for. And he’s taken Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters by Chekhov and done similar plays.

The cast gathers for a 60th birthday celebration. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Posner started out adapting novels for theater, quite reverentially, and that was his thing. And then he found, through Chekhov especially, this sort of adaptation that’s more irreverent — he talks about even subverting or perverting the plays.

So something that I’ve been hanging my hat on as a director is this idea that this play is not an adaptation. It’s built on the bones of Chekhov’s Seagull, but it really is Posner’s own play.

Success vs. failure as an artist is a major theme in both these plays.

Bird is about an aspiring theater artist named Con. He is rampaging against the status quo and striving for new forms.

His mother, Emma, is a famous actress who represents traditional theater and movies, and Con thinks all that is a lot of crap. It’s really his unresolved issues with his mother that fuel that.

It just so happens that his mother is together with a very celebrated writer named Trigorin, who is a rock star of the literary and screenwriting worlds. So they are a power-celebrity couple, and that’s just another poke at Con for his inability to measure up.

Stine Carroll ’20 portrays Emma Arkadina and Matthew Engles ’20 is Doyle Trigorin. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

But at the heart of it, this is a play about love and unrequited love. There’s a quartet of unrequited lovers happening throughout the play, and that’s very much inspired by The Seagull.

So Posner is working similar themes as Chekhov, but he moved the action into our time, and streamlined the cast and the plot, and added music. What else has he changed?

In both plays there’s a huge meta-theatrical level — these are plays about a theater artist and actors and actresses. But what Posner does, right from the first line, is to break the fourth wall. Every character has a moment where they get to acknowledge and interact with the audience.

Sukanya Shukla ‘20, as Nina, “breaks the fourth wall” and addresses the audience. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The characters know they’re in a play. And they’re asking for the audience’s help in their particular situations, so they’re asking questions of the audience.

So every performance could be a little different, because we don’t know what the audience is going to say, which is exciting.

Sounds like Posner is actually wielding the kind of breakthrough that Con and Konstantin, in The Seagull, aspire to.

There’s an image of Chekhov on the wall at one point, and Con says, “Thank you and f**k you” — he reveres and tears down at the same time, and that’s the nature of this play.

And that’s why it’s great for an actor. It’s a great challenge, but you are out there airing all of the subtexts you have about how you feel. So big emotions, big stakes, big energy.

Max Younger ‘22 plays Conrad as a portrait of Anton Chekhov is projected in the background. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Whereas what Chekhov introduced and what made him so important in theatrical history was that he was the first playwright to really build a lot of inner life into his characters.

Two years ago, for your directing debut at �ֲ���ý, you did Angels in America. One of your actors was Kirk Read, professor of French and francophone studies, who played the infamous Roy Cohn. And now he’s back for Bird.

Professor of French and Francophone Studies Kirk Read as Dr. Eugene Sorn. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Which is great. He’s playing Sorn, the older brother who is a doctor, turning 60, and he has lived life on the sideline. He’s really fascinated by these young people who are feeling all of these big feelings. He has some wonderful direct-address monologues with the audience. It’s been delightful having him onboard again.

Observed every February, “Black History Month is a time that we get to think about, to celebrate black achievements,” says Charles Nero, Benjamin E. Mays ’20 Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies, and chair of the Program in Africana.

But in addition to that, “it’s a time to continue our discussion of race and white supremacy,” Nero says. “And I’m hoping we also think about and challenge anti-blackness — and by anti-blackness, I mean the ways in which we omit and evade discussions that affirm black people and our right to exist as citizens.”

�ֲ���ý’ Africana program this month holds up such discussions in an especially engaging way: drama.

Using historical events as a basis to explore white oppression and black resistance are five plays: four written by Lecturer in Theater Clifford Odle, each based on actual incidents involving African American slaves in 18th-century New England, and a fifth, Janice Liddell’s Who Will Sing for Lena?, performed by Jes Washington ’13.

Why theater as a vehicle for Black History Month programming? As a performance medium, it gives every audience its own unique experience, Odle says. “It makes things, to me, more immediate, more alive, more visceral.”

“There’s a tradition of the dramatic form and black history that goes all the way back to W.E.B Du Bois’s pageant plays at the beginning of the 20th century,” Nero adds. “There’s a very deep tradition of black theater as a tool to educate about black accomplishment and to challenge anti-blackness.”

The Fireplace Lounge in Commons is the site for readings of plays during Black History Month that draw on historical events to explore white oppression and black resistance. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Washington, who has performed the one-woman Who Will Sing for Lena? since 2016, was a rhetoric major at �ֲ���ý and this year will earn an MFA at the Actors Studio Drama School, in New York City. Liddell’s one-woman show depicts the true story of Lena Mae Baker, a domestic worker in Georgia who killed her white lover/abuser in self-defense in 1944.

Jes Washington ’13 appears in two performances of Who Will Sing for Lena? as part of Black History Month programming at �ֲ���ý.

A jury of white men quickly found Baker guilty of murder, and she was the first woman to be executed by the electric chair in Georgia.

While Liddell’s two-act play grapples with oppression based on skin color and on gender, it’s a broad indictment of the abuse of power — or as Washington puts it, someone exercising “dominion over you just for the sheer hell of it.”

Lena, a dreamer, is “in the position where, no matter what she wants, someone is always dominant over her. She can’t get higher, because the person that is higher than her won’t allow her to do that. It’s her mom, it’s her employer, it’s society.

“She has a childlike quality to her that is beautiful when it’s time to be a child, but not so much when she should be an adult. She never really learned how to be an adult.”

The headstone of Lena Baker in Mt. Vernon Baptist Church cemetery, in Cuthbert, Ga. (Photograph by 86billy86 CC BY-SA https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

Washington took the role, in part, as a way of coming to grips with trauma she suffered as a child. “Most of the women who were approached to do this role had similar experiences to the character and it was a little too much for them. So they all turned it down,” Washington says.

“It was very close to home for me as well, but I decided that instead of saying ‘No’ and running away from it, I wanted to use it, to heal from it.”

Early on, she says, “I was going through this process of healing, so it was more frightening every time I went up. There was only so much depth I could give it without crying uncontrollably onstage. But as the years have gone on, I’ve allowed myself to think extremely deeply into the character. Lena and I are quite one at this point.”

At �ֲ���ý, Washington belonged to the Modern Dance Company and was one of the students who founded Sankofa, whose Martin Luther King Jr. Day performances examine stories and experiences of the African diaspora.

Advised by Nero, her rhetoric thesis looked at colorism, prejudice based on skin color, within black and Hispanic communities. Her thesis materials comprised a 45-minute video documentary featuring interviews with a host of �ֲ���ý folks — and a 75-page written piece.

“Instead of saying ‘No’ and running away from Lena, I wanted to use it, to heal from it.”

She and her interview subjects, Washington says, talked about the effects of colorism “on minority mindsets — what we think about as far as what is beautiful, what is acceptable, what gets you along in this life. Or some of the things that our mothers would say when we were growing up because they just didn’t know any better.”

The products of assiduous research, including long hours in the Massachusetts Archives, Odle’s Colonial-era plays scrutinize a period in African American history that figures less in today’s consciousness than happenings in the 19th and 20th centuries. Yet there’s an intriguing parallel between the macrocosm of Colonial society and the smaller black world within it.

“Many of the ideas of liberty and independence that the Founding Fathers thought about and eventually fought over,” he explains, “were ideas that African Americans were thinking about and fighting over, even more so because they were dealing with slavery on top of that.

“So while John Adams and other folks can say, ‘Yes, these powers a thousand miles away are going to make slaves of us,’ there are slaves here saying, ‘Well, you’ve already made slaves of us, and we’d like to have a say in this.’”

Sam Alexander ’20, as Phoebe, speaks to Quaco (Dawrin Silfa ’21) near the end of the Feb. 6 reading of According to Mark. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

He says, “Black history in this sense is American history — it’s as much a part of the foundation of this country as Paul Revere’s ride and anything else any of the Founding Fathers did. So I think if you’re a serious about diversity, if you’re also serious about presenting different views of history, then you want to have a venue where these different views can be displayed,” that venue being Black History Month.

Looking at the status of both African Americans and women, Odle’s full-length Deerfield Homecoming combines and fictionalizes two separate historical episodes that took place in Deerfield, Mass.

One main character is Lucy Terry, a slave whose ballad poem “Bars Fight” is considered the oldest known literary work by an African American. The other is Eunice Williams, an English colonist who was kidnapped by the French and the Mohawks as a child and became assimilated into Mohawk society.

J’von Ortiz-Cedeno ’22 of Portland, Texas, asks a question after the Fireplace Lounge reading as Charlotte Lynskey ’21 of Costa Mesa, Calif. listens. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In real life, Eunice periodically visited her English family. In his play, Odle explains, Eunice’s father kidnaps her on one of those visits. He assigns Lucy Terry, Eunice’s childhood friend, to somehow try to reawaken Eunice’s pre-Mohawk identity.

Each around 10 minutes long, Odle’s other three plays in the Black History Month series are parts of Blood in the Revolution, a work in progress. Performed on Feb. 6, According to Mark is about “a slave who could read and was looking for a way to free himself from an oppressive master. And he felt the Bible provided a path to murdering him as long as he didn’t spill blood.”

The play is set during the planning of the murder, which also involved two other slaves, Mark’s sister Phyllis and a woman called Phoebe. In the actual event, Mark was hanged for the murder and Phyllis was burned at the stake — a punishment that in Colonial America was reserved for female slaves who kill their masters, Odle says.

Quaco (Dawrin Silfa ’21) makes a point to Mark (professor Charles Nero) and Phyllis
(Perla Figuereo ’21). (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Witness to an Execution deals with a literate slave named Andrew who was an important witness to the Boston Massacre, the 1770 killing of several colonists by British troops. As a slave, Odle says, Andrew “does not have the status in society that other witnesses did. So the play explores the kind of pressures that he may have faced in deciding whether or not to actually testify or get involved in white men’s business, as some people would call it.”

Finally, A Suit of Freedom focuses on a woman named Mum Bett, aka Elizabeth Freeman, who successfully won her freedom from slavery in a 1780 court case in Massachusetts. “Her case eventually led to the ending of slavery in Massachusetts,” Odle explains.

“And in that play, she has a discussion with her former mistress, who is trying to lure her back. I thought it’d be interesting to see what that conversation could have been like.”

“Bittersweet” is how �ֲ���ý theater professor Martin Andrucki characterizes the play he has chosen for the college’s autumn mainstage production.

While the laughs keep coming in Love/Sick, which was written by actor and playwright John Cariani and runs at �ֲ���ý , the underlying theme is that love really is a sickness, a malady of the heart with no known cure.

In the vignette "Destiny," "Emily" (Alex Gilbertson '22) and "Jake" (Rishi Madnani '23) reconnect at a big-box store after divorcing each other. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

"I liked the idea of a play that is not romantic about love," says Martin Andrucki, Dana Professor of Theater, on why he chose to stage "Love/Sick." (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College

Muskan Verma '21 plays "Liz" and Hale Murch '22 is "Abbie" in "Love/Sick." (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The singing telegram delivered by Losseni Barry '22 is not what the recipient, played by Alex Gilbertson '22, expected to hear. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In the "Love/Sick" vignette "Lunch and Dinner," characters played by Brady Chilson '23 and Sadie Basila '23 reveal that their appetites have strayed. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In a sense, says Andrucki, the play “is about disposability in relationships — there’s this sense of, you pick them up and you drop them. Everything is always on the verge of coming apart and ending.”

Cariani uses an unconventional narrative structure to drive the painful point home. It’s a tightly concentrated adaptation of dramatic unity: Where a conventional play unfolds over a span of time, the nine short plays that constitute Love/Sick depict scenarios that, we are meant to understand, are happening simultaneously.

Those vignettes begin with the collision of an “obsessive impulsive” couple in a big-box store. Later, Andrucki says, a woman gets dumped by her boyfriend via a singing telegram. “Then there are two guys who are interested in each other but can’t quite bring it off, and a couple on their wedding day and the man backs out.” And so on.

The characters played by Brady Chilson and Emily Diaz, both ’23, are strangers irresistibly drawn together at a big-box store. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Not only that, but seven of the nine vignettes are set in different rooms of a single house, bookended by the episodes in the store. Similarly surprising, and ingenious, is the handling of character development, as each vignette features a couple who are a bit more experienced in romance (not to say successful) than those in the previous plotline. So the play’s emotional arc is cumulative, building across the experiences of 18 characters.

Muskan Verma ’21 plays Liz and Hale Murch ’22 is Abbie in Love/Sick. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Raised in the northern Maine town of Presque Isle, Cariani has enjoyed an acting career that’s included five seasons on Law & Order, an Outer Critics Circle Award for his work in a 2004 Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof, and film roles alongside Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and Ed Asner.

But Cariani may be better-known in Maine for a playwriting career that, in addition to Love/Sick, includes his acclaimed debut, Almost, Maine. “The last time I checked, it was the most frequently performed play in American high schools, displacing A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Andrucki says. “So in Cariani vs. Shakespeare, Cariani won.”

Noah Pott ’22 and Lucas Allen ’22 are shown in the segment titled “What?!?” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Why did you choose Love/Sick?

A practical reason is that it’s a play subdivided into shorter plays, each one 10 to 12 minutes long, and each requiring two characters. So that gave opportunities for a whole bunch of students to perform that you might not get in a play with six characters, and there were a lot of kids chomping at the bit. They wanted to get involved, and so I got them involved.

How many students did you cast?

There are 12, with six of them playing two characters. And there’s never a time when the same two actors show up together, so there are some logistics to deal with there. And also you want to make sure the audience is not confused — “Is this the same couple that I saw before?” And no, it’s always different couples.

Sarah, played by Emily Diaz ’23, confronts Bill, played by Rishi Madnani ’23. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

What’s another reason you picked this play?

I liked the idea of a play that is not romantic about love. Kids who are 18 to 21 years old often have unrealistic ideas about love. And this play is quite cold-eyed in its view what love can often entail, which is a lot of pain, disappointment, and failure. So I thought it would be a useful exercise in a more mature perspective on what’s entailed by love.

As an actor, how is John Cariani as a playwright?

He’s got a very nice knack, and I’d like to expose students to his particular kind of dramaturgical skill.

You take a little play that’s 11 minutes long, you’ve got to get the job done economically. You’ve got to have all the elements in place — beginning, middle, and end, recognition and reversal, crisis, climax. All those things have to be there in a very compact setting.

It’s a little bit like making jewelry, and he does that nine times in the course of assembling short plays into a longer play. Students get to see how these nine plays actually add up to an overarching narrative.

Cariani writes with an understanding of what it means to take a pause. He writes the pauses in, provides you with scoring, the kind of scoring that an actor can read, the way a musician reads notes. So that’s all there quite explicitly in the text. And he also writes like an actor, because actors like big moments, and each little play has a nice big moment.

In the vignette “Forgot,” “Jill” (Olivia Dimond ’22) mourns the child she never had with “Kevin” (Kush Sharma ’23). (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

What’s challenging about directing nine short plays, as opposed to one longer one?

When you’re working with five or six actors, you say, “Okay, you’ve got to get it right in the first act.” Then from that, they learn to get it right in the second act, so I don’t have to [work with them] for every single strophe of the play. It’s different when you’re working with 12 actors in nine short little plays.

The opening and closing vignettes take place in the same location, but that still leaves seven different rooms in a house that you have to show. How are you and designer Christine McDowell managing that?

Everything is in place on stage, and we’re treating the locations like model rooms in an Ikea store. The play begins and ends in an Ikea-like store, and each vignette mentions that store. One person has bought a gun there. Another person has rented a movie there. We also learn that the store runs a singing telegram operation.

The singing telegram delivered by Losseni Barry ’22 is not what the recipient, played by Alex Gilbertson ’22, expected to hear. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

That’s some store. What’s the big-box store motif telling us?

It’s about disposability in relationships — there’s this sense of, you pick them up and you drop them. Everything is always on the verge of coming apart and ending. The way the thing you buy breaks.

Sounds bleak!

Well, it’s kind of funny. It’s bittersweet without being bleak, I guess. It’s easy to understand and to relate to — everybody has had some kind of heartbreak, I think. And everybody enjoys rueful laughter.

Love/Sick vignette "Lunch and Dinner," Mark (Brady Chilson ’23) and Kelly (Sadie Basila ’23) reveal that their appetites have strayed. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)” width=”1919″ height=”1279″> In the Love/Sick vignette “Lunch and Dinner,” characters played by Brady Chilson ’23 and Sadie Basila ’23 reveal that their appetites have strayed. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In Greek mythology, Eurydice is an especially tragic character.

She married Orpheus, the greatest musician who ever lived — but died on their wedding day and descended into the Underworld. The love of the grieving Orpheus for her was so strong that he went, literally, to Hell and back to retrieve her. The beauty of his music was enough to persuade the Lord of the Underworld to release his bride.

But there was one condition: If Orpheus looked back to make sure that Eurydice was following, she would die again — forever. And so it happened.

Sukanya Shukla ’20 during a dress rehearsal of Eurydice. Associate Professor of Theater Christine McDowell designed the set and costumes. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

Orpheus’ lost love takes the spotlight as the central figure in Eurydice, Sarah Ruhl’s 2003 adaption of the tragedy, which �ֲ���ý is presenting in a strikingly staged While her husband is mourning her untimely death, she must navigate the underworld and all the painful memories it elicits.

Here’s a brief conversation with Martin Andrucki, Dana Professor of Theater, who directs the �ֲ���ý production.

How are you handling the play in terms of design?

We are staging the action — and seating the audience — entirely on the stage of Schaeffer Theatre in a space that will be surrounded by water, the River Lethe. The auditorium, which usually accommodates spectators, forms a cavernous backdrop to dramatic events on earth and in the Underworld.

Sukanya Shukla ’20 is Eurydice and Cael Schwartz ’19 is the Lord of the Underworld in the �ֲ���ý production of Eurydice. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

With poetic dialogue, elaborate visual effects, and silent scenes that overflow with emotion, Ruhl’s retelling turns a Greek myth into a memorable experience that The New York Times describes as “rhapsodically beautiful … an inexpressibly moving theatrical fable about love, loss and the pleasures and pains of memory.”

Christine McDowell, associate professor of theater, designed the set and costumes. Alice Swanson Esty Professor of Music Bill Matthews wrote the music, and Michael Reidy, senior lecturer and managing director in theater and dance, designed the lighting.

Why is this play a good choice for the students involved?

The play tells a classic story using the techniques of the contemporary stage. It’s a wonderful synthesis of the traditional and the new, and therefore a great vehicle for doing theater in the liberal arts context.

Also, the script calls for a non-naturalistic, poetic style of production and performance, and since our students’ default mode is realism, this is a good opportunity to jog them out of their aesthetic habits.

Sukanya Shukla ’20 plays the role of Eurydice on the dramatically redesigned Schaeffer Theatre stage. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

What themes are at work here?

Sophocles tells us that nothing can stand in the late wind of death. Eurydice, her husband Orpheus, and her father all struggle to resist the force of this gale, succeed for a little while, and ultimately fail.

Eurydice is about carrying on that struggle even though we know what the outcome will be. It’s also about a woman torn between romantic love for a man with whom she has little in common, and daughterly love for a father who cherishes and understands her.

What’s in this play for a local audience?

It tells a great story about love, death, and the intensity of devotion between fathers and daughters. It’s funny, moving, and beautifully clear. Not to mention short. And no prior knowledge of the myth is required: it’s all there in the script.

Shown with Sukanya Shukla ’20, at right, Ethan Winglass ’19 portrays Orpheus in Eurydice. Theater professor Tim Dugan, at rear, plays Eurydice’s father. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

“In our department, there’s great freedom of choice as a director,” says Timothy Dugan, assistant professor of theater. “We’re able to suggest to the department what we would really like to see.”

And what he really wanted to see, Dugan told his theater colleagues last fall — just a few weeks into his first semester here — was �ֲ���ý presenting one of the pinnacles of 20th-century theater: Angels in America: Millennium Approaches.

The play is the first in playwright Tony Kushner’s duology Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. The plays grapple with love, religion, politics, community — and, especially, with the medical-cultural terror that was the spread of HIV–AIDS in the 1980s. (The second play is AIA: Perestroika.)

Shown during a March 7 dress rehearsal, Assistant Professor of Theater Tim Dugan is the director of the �ֲ���ý production of Angels in America: Millennium Approaches. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The travails of two couples on the rocks drive the plot, wrapped in magical realism and embellished with the savvy fictionalizing of historic figures. But in essence, as the title suggests, the topic of Millennium Approaches is both dead simple and unfathomably complicated: the feeling that everything’s about to change.

The play debuted on Broadway, and received Pulitzer and Tony awards, in 1993 (in which year, the World Health Organization estimated, there were 2.5 million cases of AIDS globally). In 2018, the 25th anniversary of Millennium Approaches’ Broadway debut, it’s appearing in a number of revivals — including that, under Dugan’s direction, opened March 8 and continues through the 12th.

A series of supporting events (titled The Great Work Begins, after a key phrase from the play) began in February and included research presentations by scholars and students.

Impressed from the start by the campus’ openness to robust ideas, Dugan says, “I felt like this was something that would be embraced and celebrated. And it has been.”

The play is set in 1985. How is it still relevant?

John Dello Russo ’18 plays Louis Ironson and Ethan Winglass ’19 plays Joe Pitt in Angels in America: Millennium Approaches. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Certainly there has been progress in LGBTQIA+ rights since 1985, when AIDS wasn’t even acknowledged yet as a national epidemic. But, absolutely, this play still resonates today.

One of the characters is Roy Cohn, based on the powerful lawyer. The role isn’t biographical to a T, but we all know that Roy Cohn was President Trump’s lawyer at one point. Certainly you could [view] the playbook that Cohn used to get what he wanted as something that our president has been inspired by and uses to this day. Just a few weeks back, Trump said, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” in a press conference.

I think Tony Kushner is capturing something a lot of people are wondering about, how we’re questioning democracy in some ways right now. Kushner is an incredible political writer, and he makes no bones about that.

What is Kushner’s overriding theme in Angels in America, do you think?

I think he’s asking us to embrace change. The characters in this play are faced with enormous and often unendurable circumstances. They begin the play in crisis.

Nate Stephenson ’18 portrays Prior Walter. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

We follow Prior Walter, who has been diagnosed with AIDS and then is abandoned by his lover. Prior is the prophet that an angel has come to reckon with. And through him, Kushner gives us this idea that we can resist change — and if so, the consequences will be quite dire — or we can embrace change. Change can be extremely painful and difficult, but in Kushner’s view, it’s necessary.

The play also asks, “What does it mean to be an American?” Because, you know, the play is about so many things — race, spirituality, religion, sexuality. And Kushner uses the AIDS crisis as a lens to ask those questions. What has it taught us about being Americans? How have we been, or not been, there for each other in this situation?

Now more than ever, that question — certainly for myself and certainly for students — has been one we’ve really been digging into and grappling with.

How do you bring your student actors up to speed with the mid-1980s context?

We’re very fortunate to have two student dramaturges on board, Alison Greene ’20 and Luc Alper-Leroux ’20, to do research, and it’s quite extensive with this play. We have a Google folder that the whole cast and crew are invited to, and that’s an enormous aid for all of us, because there are so many historical, religious, and philosophical references in the play.

A dramatic peak in the Angels story. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

I have a good friend who works for Actors Theater of Louisville, which produced both parts of Angels last October. Their resident dramaturge did an interview with Alison and Luc — we had a great phone conference — and shared some of her ideas, which illuminated the play for us in an exciting way.

And what’s great about doing it here at �ֲ���ý is that we’re surrounded by de facto dramaturges. For example, politics professor Stephen Engel [a national authority on American political development and social movements, particularly involving LGBTQ issues] came to a rehearsal of a scene that was talking about different political movements in the ’80s, as Roy and his sidekick Martin Heller are trying to persuade another character to join them. So we were able to unpack it that way. It was wonderful.

How do you drive home to students the sheer emotional and cultural weight of AIDS and HIV in the 1980s?

That’s been one of the most important, and most challenging, parts. I saw the original production in New York — I was working for a theater downtown, and I used to walk through the Village, and there was something in the atmosphere. You could see it passing people on the street.

Hello, angel: Prior Walter receives a visitor, played by Sofia Elbadawi ’18. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

To try to capture that for students, we’ve spent a lot of time in dialogue about it, frankly. We’ve immersed ourselves in video clips and other information, and the Great Work Begins series was also designed for all of us to embrace as a cast and crew.

We’re just trying to get to the depth, trying to honor those people who endured that, survived that, died in that.

Could you talk a bit more about the department’s support for this project?

I sincerely appreciate their embrace of it because it is a challenging play. Not only for the cast — the play’s three hours long — but technically. Act III is all ghosts appearing and then vanishing, and this great book emerges out of the floor and bursts into flames, and then goes away. You read that in the stage directions, and you have to laugh and say “Come on, Mr. Kushner” — because he also says, “All in 30 seconds.”

And, oh, yeah — there’s an angel that cracks through the ceiling of Prior’s apartment, descends, and has the last final moment. How do you pull that off? There are so many creative problems to solve, and the department has been totally game.

The actress playing Harper Pitt, Hope French ’18, has undertaken the part for an honors thesis, which will include a written component as well as the performances. Tell us a bit about how she prepared for the role.

Hope French ’18 portrays Harper Pitt as part of her honors thesis in theater. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Harper is the wildly imaginative, Valium-popping, hallucination-prone, and terribly lonely wife of Joe Harper. Their marriage is falling apart throughout the play as they confront both Joe’s sexuality — he’s coming out — and their love for one another.

Hope passionately immersed herself in these complex, hugely emotional realms of the role and the world of the play, and did extensive research, both into the socio-historical context and her own portrayal. She’s been incredibly enthusiastic and receptive toward exploring different approaches to creating a character. We spent last semester delving into the Michael Chekhov Technique, a psycho-physical approach to acting that emphasizes the use of imagination as a way in for an actress, and she experimented with applying that to this role, which is really one of the emotional centers of Angels in America.   

Hope brings a professionalism to her work that is beyond her years, which is inspiring to witness.

And your casting choice for Cohn may surprise many �ֲ���ýies: Kirk Read, professor of French and francophone studies.

I knew from the beginning that I’d love to have someone older than a student in the Roy Cohn role. I got to know Kirk during new faculty orientation and we hit it off immediately. When I was thinking about this, I said, “All right, what the hell?”

So I kind of bothered him for a while, and then he graciously accepted. And he said from the beginning, “Treat me like anyone else.” His commitment is amazing.

Kirk Read, professor of French and francophone studies, plays the role of Roy Cohn, based on the real lawyer. He’s shown with Ethan Winglass ’19. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

When a delegation from the �ֲ���ý theater department went to a college theater festival in Connecticut last month, their Airbnb lodging turned out to be the erstwhile country getaway for the late king of television variety shows, Ed Sullivan.

The two faculty, one alumnus and four students from �ֲ���ý were open to any supernatural visitations from Sullivan, but he was a no-show. No matter: For the students, all veterans of the 2017 �ֲ���ý production of Diary of a Madman, what counted was the real-world show business contacts and experiences they gained at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.

Those experiences included two KCACTF awards to students, one for achievement in publicity design and a second for mastery of backstage practices.

Members of �ֲ���ý’ delegation to the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival included Rebecca Berger ’19, left, Diary of a Madman stage manager; director Kati Vecsey, holding the award for her adaptation of Gogol’s short story; actor Nate Stephenson ’18; Michael Reidy, production designer, holding the Golden Hammer Award; and Daniel Paseltiner ’16, who assisted with computer programming. Also shown are Eva Goldstein ’18, assistant Madman designer, second from left; and Rachel Forcillo ’18, right, who received a KCACTF award for her poster design. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

A third award went to Senior Lecturer in Theater Katalin Vecsey for her stage adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s 19th-century short story.

Students are the focus of the festival, which affords opportunities to present work in myriad aspects of theater to a professional audience. For students considering a stage or screen career, both the KCACTF awards and the sheer experience of attending the event are valuable.

“Students get really good feedback on their work,” Vecsey says, “and also good networking opportunities. And it’s a good opportunity to see who does what, and why, and where to go” in the complex, competitive world of show business.

Rachel Forcillo ’18 took this photo of Madman actor Nate Stephenson and used it as the basis for her “mosaic” poster.

While it’s a student-focused festival, Vecsey does point to professional benefits for the faculty who accompany the students. “It’s good to put yourself into the competition in a way that you can see where you are,” she explains.

“You know, you might be a superstar on your own campus, but as soon as you go to a competition, you realize that, ‘Maybe I really need to do more work.’” (The eight regional festivals send 125 students to compete in the national festival in April in Washington, D.C.)

Stage manager Rebecca Berger ’19 of Bethesda, Md., received the Golden Hammer Award, which recognizes productions that demonstrate exceptional skill in and knowledge of backstage practices, from load-in to load-out.

Requiring three computers, 18 onstage monitors, and more than 1,000 cues, Madman was a bear to build technically — but once built, it was impressively straightforward to stage at the festival, held Jan. 30–Feb. 4 at Western Connecticut State University.

And here’s Forcillo’s finished poster.

“It was high-tech,” says Vecsey, “but despite that, it was just very easy to load it in, set it up, and and load it out.”

For the Golden Hammer, Berger submitted “the stage management handbook that she made and worked from,” says Vecsey. And that book was assessed by so-called respondents — judges, more or less — whom Vescey describes as Broadway stage managers.

The third award went to Rachel Forcillo ’18 of Grosse Pointe, Mich. She received a Merit Award for Publicity for her Madman poster design — a mosaic image that compiles thousands of still photos to depict the face of Nate Stephenson.

For the poster, Vecsey suggested the photo mosaic, which had a counterpart in some of the monitor imagery onstage. For the image that would ultimately be rendered as the mosaic, Forcillo photographed Stephenson on the set, lighting his face from below in classic scary-tales-around-the-campfire fashion.

“The entire time, Kati screamed ‘Be mad! Madder! You are a MADMAN!’ so he’d get into character,” Forcillo says. “I showed her the shot and she was like, ‘That’s the one.’”

Working with photos taken by Grace Link ’19 and edited by Lily Kip ’19, Forcillo painstakingly recolored them to match different regions of the master portrait. Finally, she used an online mosaic generator to match the “tile” photos with the appropriate color regions.

“The entire time, Kati screamed ‘Be mad! Madder! You are a MADMAN!’”

Another student making a strong showing at the KCACTF was the play’s sole onstage performer, Nathaniel Stephenson ’18 of Ellsworth, Maine. Not only did he perform Madman twice, but he also auditioned for the esteemed Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship. (Yes, a scholarship established by the actress who played Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies.) Out of a field of 180, Stephenson made it to the semi-finals, in company with 35 other student actors.

One of the two respondents for Madman was Michelle Bombe, national vice chair of the festival and director of the theater program at Hope College in Michigan. “I was able to talk to her about my work,” says Stephenson.

“The importance of connections in the world of professional theater can’t be understated, and the festival is a great place to make them.”

Michael Reidy works on technical cues on the Diary of a Madman set last November. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

A double major in theater and in French and francophone studies, Stephenson took Vecsey’s Madman adaptation as his project for a six-week summer training at the Moscow Art Theater last year, and it’s the topic of his honors thesis project. He aims to start his professional acting career in Boston after graduation.

The Merit Award for Script Adaptation is the second KCACTF award that Vecsey, who also directed Madman, has received. The first, in 2013, recognized her interdisciplinary collaboration with �ֲ���ý composer Bill Matthews, Alice Swanson Esty Professor of Music, for the �ֲ���ý production of 1000 Airplanes on the Roof. Matthews also wrote music for Madman.

What led Vecsey to adapt the Gogol story for the stage? “Growing up during communism in Hungary,” she says, “I loved the Russian literature.”

The story also intrigued her because it is considered one of the earliest literary treatments of schizophrenia. Finally, the notion of adapting a story from 1835 posed a dramaturgical problem that Vecsey found compelling: “How can you make it relevant today? And would an audience perceive it as, ‘Yes, this person is really mentally ill’?”

Part of the challenge, then, involved finding 21st-century equivalents of 19th-century activities. So the protagonist, Everyman (the character that Gogol called Poprishchin) pours his thoughts into a blog instead of the titular diary, for example.

In addition to Stephenson and Berger, �ֲ���ý students attending the festival were Lila Patinkin ’20, Stephenson’s scene partner in the Irene Ryan Auditions, and Nora Dahlberg ’18, who presented her costume design thesis. They were accompanied by Vescey; Madman production designer Michael Reidy, senior lecturer and managing director of theater and dance; and Daniel Paseltiner ’16, who works in a neuroscience lab at �ֲ���ý but helped Reidy with programming.

Nate Stephenson ’18 as Everyman. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In Nikolai Gogol’s 1835 short story “Diary of a Madman,” a low-level Russian civil servant descends into madness.

Now , a �ֲ���ý adaptation of the story puts a contemporary twist on the strikingly familiar tale.

The play, adapted by Senior Lecturer in Theater Katalin Vecsey, is set in the present day — Siri replaces a servant and the main character blogs instead of journals — and the set features video walls that display the inner workings of Everyman’s mind as he loses his grip on reality.

But the story that this high-tech production helps tell — one of isolation, unrealized ambitions, unrequited love, and mental illness — is timeless.

Nate Stephenson ’18 of Ellsworth, Maine, plays Everyman as part of his honors thesis in theater. Professor of Music Bill Matthews composed original music for the play.

In the play, the Everyman is in awe of his boss, mistrusts interns and coworkers, and is in love with the boss' daughter. The outside examiner for Stephenson's thesis will be Dassia Posner '94, a Northwestern professor and expert in Russian theater. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Diary of a Madman will be performed in the Black Box Theater from Nov. 9 to Nov. 13. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

With his work, personal life, and love interest going nowhere, the Everyman comes to believe he is the King of Spain. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College).

The Everyman ends up being committed, believing he is watched over by the Grand Inquisitor of Spain. Last summer, Stephenson received a Phillips Student Fellowship to study theater in Moscow. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

As part of the short story's translation to the stage and the modern world — a carriage becomes a limousine, a housekeeper becomes Siri, the main character blogs instead of journals — the set includes walls of monitors that display the Everyman's mind. The monitors and software were funded by �ֲ���ý' Information & Library Services and designed by Senior Lecturer in Theater Michael Reidy. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)