Based on an ancient Greek tradition of theatrical competition, Harper Joy theater’s annual One-Act Play Contest will open next Wednesday, Feb. 10. A committee of readers selects three students’ one-act scripts from a larger pool of submissions. These students then have the opportunity to produce their one-act with a student director, cast and crew. The audience members rank the plays and the winner of the contest receives a cash prize.
This year, the committee chose scripts by sophomore Michaela Gianotti and seniors Mimi Cook and Galen Cobb to compete in the contest.
Gianotti’s “That Chair Is Empty” centers around the Sampson family preparing for a special dinner guest. The eldest daughter, Julia, is home from college and is a bit unnerved by the somewhat erratic behavior of her mother and her two younger siblings. Julia’s feelings worsen when she realizes that the expected dinner guest may be a figment of her family’s imagination.
Cook’s “The Ride” retells the story of Cassandra and Agamemnon. In this rendition, Agamemnon is a soldier returning from war with Cassandra who is cursed with a vision of their coming murder. In the last hours before arrival, Cassandra tries to warn Agamemnon, but he is intent on his return home.
“The Ferrets of my Heartbroken Past,” Cobb’s one-act, is the story of Gray, who after a devastating break-up begins to piece him self together despite being tormented by both a self-serving friend and the specter of his ex-girlfriend. Meanwhile, Gray’s unexpected attraction to a fellow ranch-hand leaves him conflicted between forbidden love and his rough-and-tumble cowboy lifestyle.
These writers, their directors and their casts and crews have been working for weeks to put together their productions, which has been a process full of new opportunities, but not without frustrations.
When asked what the most frustrating part of directing a one-act was, the three directors had similar responses.
“The biggest challenge is telling my peers what to do,” said sophomore Caitlin Goldie, director of Cook’s “The Ride,” “I don’t want to tell them what to do because, you know, it’s uncomfortable.”
Sophomore Sarah Wright, director of Gianotti’s “That Chair is Empty” agreed.
“Half my cast is older than I am,” she said. “I let them know that they have just as good of ideas as I have. So we get to collaborate and really come together as a team.”
Senior Lindsey Witcosky, director of Cobb’s “The Ferrets of my Heartbroken Past,” also indicated that she had experienced some difficulty keeping the group in check.
“The most frustrating thing is maintaining control over a group of my peers,” she said. “Student directing is tough because often everyone takes it less seriously, and that can really hinder the production.”
But despite the minor challenges that the directors have faced in leading their peers, their casts and crews seem to really enjoy working with a student director. First-year Jeremy Kotler, who plays the part of Phil in “The Ferrets of My Heartbroken Past,” found this dynamic particularly productive.
“Professional directors have more of an idea of what they want to do and you have to conform to that; but here, the actor and the director can work off of each other,” he said.
Much like the Instant Play Festival, which is held in the fall semester, the One-Act Play Contest offers unique opportunities for student writing and directing. While the One-Act Play Contest allows writers an indefinite period of time to write the script and a few weeks to direct it, the Instant Play Festival has more draining rules. Writers for the Instant Play Festival have only twelve hours to produce a ten minute script, and directors have only twelve hours to direct the production before it opens that night. Many of the actors, directors and writers now working on the One-Acts were also involved with the Instant Play Festival, and the majority of them preferred the One-Act process. The actors appreciated how much more time they were given to work on their roles.
“I’m liking [the One-Acts] more,” said Kotler, “because I have more time to develop my character and learn my lines.”
For the writers, having more time was very helpful.
“I like this process. I like having lots of time because the Instant Play Festival was so quick and you just write it and don’t really have time to go back and change things. It’s like word vomit on a page; hope it’s good. But [the one-act] was something that I wrote multiple drafts of,” said Gianotti.
Cook expressed similar sentiments.
“In this process I got to write what I wanted and really write the play I wanted to write as opposed to the play [for the Instant Play Festival] that my caffeine-hyped, sleep-starved brain wrote at the three in the morning,” she said.
Difficulties aside, most student participants agreed that the One-Acts have been extremely fun to produce.
“[This] is basically three weeks of having fun and exploring a new text, and you also have the writer there with you, which is really great,” said Wright.
