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Sarah Wolfe ’12 reflects on the role of Theater

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“If our imaginations can lead us to profound, performative empathy, I believe even more strongly that the space of performance must be harnessed to imagine love instead of hatred. I need to believe that theorizing and documenting, witnessing and creating performance will continue to grace our lives with meaning, generosity, understanding, and memory, however provisional and fleeting.”

-Jill Dolan, forum on tragedy after 9/11

Sarah Wolfe '12 as Hecuba in "Lift Your Head," photo credit Ariella Axelbank.

Before coming to Wesleyan, theater lacked definition in my life. I understood why I did it, to some extent, but I didn’t completely understand its role in society, in the broader picture of how I interact with the world. I loved doing theater with children for its educational and confidence building qualities, and I loved performing with my peers for its incredible power to build a community over a common goal.

Photo credit Andy Ribner.

Throughout my time at Wesleyan I’ve been given the opportunity to look at not just how we perform, but why we perform and what our performances mean.  For my senior thesis this year I was particularly inspired by an essay called Notes About Political Theater by Tony Kushner. The essay is something of a manifesto on why the playwright chooses to make political theater and what in fact that term means. Mr. Kushner sees political theater as theater that responds to, that is reflective of, that understands events in contemporary society. He recognizes the stigma against political theater that prevents audiences from wanting to  see plays that make them think, or make them feel guilty, then goes on to call to all theater makers to make good political theater that negates this stigma and allows theater to be used as a tool for understanding and sparking change in the world.

It’s a big idea. Yet, at the same time, it’s not. We live in a beautiful, awesome, marvelous world filled with pain, hurt, violence, and destruction. Mr. Kushner is not asking us to fill our plays with decay and depression, but rather to engage

Photo credit Andy Ribner.

with the world that we all must be a part of in everything that we do. Theater cannot simply be an escape from that world. It must be a response to it.

My thesis, Lift Your Head, was on Euripides’ Trojan Women, an ancient story about the devastation of war that has survived to resonate and share its wounds with modern audiences who still suffer through war. It was a capstone project for me in many ways, not least of which in helping me define what kind of theater I want to watch and be a part of in the future. I have come to realize that if and when I make and watch theater in the years to come, I want it to be political theater. I want to be a part of theater that understands that the world we live in is both challenging and amazing and attempts to address that world. This is not to say that I don’t and won’t enjoy the occasional musical or light comedy, but the theater that is most enjoyable is that which makes me reflect on how I inhabit, how we all inhabit this world, and the choices we make that affect it.

I am entering a completely different industry when I graduate at the end of this month, but theater will always play a huge role in my life. The ideas and ways of talking about theater that I have learned here will stay with me as I move forward from Wesleyan into that grand, awesome, and terrifying world.

Sarah Wolfe ’12 previews “Junk Redemption” by Alma Sanchez-Eppler ’14

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Sarah Wolfe ’12 interviews Alma Sanchez-Eppler ’14 about her upcoming play “Junk Redemption,” opening this Friday, May 11 through Sunday, May 13, 2012 at 8pm, in front of the Whisper Wall (on Washington Terrace).

This weekend Second Stage is presenting a new play, written and directed by Alma Sanchez-Eppler ’14. The play, Junk Redemption, goes up Friday through Sunday at 8pm in front of the Whisper Wall (located on Washington Terrace) in the Center for the Arts. Earlier this week I sat down with the student playwright to discuss the play, the process, and her aspirations as a playwright. The process of writing the play began in her Intermediate Playwriting class as an exercise in character driven playwriting, which was a new experience for Ms. Sanchez-Eppler. But as the writing process continued, Ms. Sanchez-Eppler found that historical facts from her own family history had trickled into the piece.

“It wasn’t until after the play was pretty much done and I was just editing it that I realized how much it relates to everything my grandmother has done in her life.”

The play follows the life of an isolated artist as she is discovered by a Baltimore gallery. Flashbacks narrate the story of why the artist began her work of creating sculptures out of available junk. Ms. Sanchez-Eppler calls the play “an homage” to her grandmother, who is currently suffering through the early stages of dementia.

“[My grandmother] was a social worker, and that’s a pretty big aspect of the show, and she was a tour guide in the New York Folk Art Museum for a very long time. She’s one of the most imaginative people I know. I love being around her because it is necessary for me to have an immediacy to my interactions with her. It requires a presence of being and a presence of mind and not much concern for referencing anything in the past.”

Ms. Sanchez-Eppler notes that she is someone who tries to find all of the interesting places on the Wesleyan campus, which is why Junk Redemption is not going up in a more traditional theatrical setting. The Whisper Wall, on the back side of the CFA facing Washington Terrace, is an interesting, if little known, architectural structure of the CFA. From the outside it is a semi-circle of concrete with a tree in the middle, but if one person stands inside the wall and whispers, the sound resonates so that a person standing on the other side can hear every word perfectly. Aside from this semi-magical feature, which is impossible to feature in a theatrical production, Ms. Sanchez-Eppler still felt something appropriate about the space for this particular production.

“It feels like you’ve entered this other world. It doesn’t feel like Wesleyan when you’re in that sort of enclosure, that semi-circle. The set required a tree and there was a tree there. It provides a natural stage.”

Ms. Sanchez-Eppler is a first time director, and spoke to the challenges of directing her own piece, which is what most student playwrights must do in order to show their work.

“I was lucky enough in high school to have one of my plays I wrote then directed, and it was really nice to push the bird out of the nest and just have it happen without me being there. I’d love for people to want to direct shows of mine. That would be dreamy.”

However, as she moves forward at Wesleyan, she is particularly interested in collaborative theater making. She cited Augusto Boal and The Medea Project as particular examples of theater that inspires her. Both tie into another focus of Ms. Sanchez-Eppler’s: work that is done creatively around prison reform. She has worked closely through her time here with Professor of Theater Ron Jenkins, whose classes bring students to local prisons to learn and teach about social activism through theater. She hopes to continue to have chances to learn about and create collaborative and empowering theater in her time at Wesleyan and after.

Come see Junk Redemption this weekend! The show is free and unticketed, so show up at 8pm at the Whispering Wall on Washington Terrace. Don’t miss this wonderful example of student creativity at Wesleyan!

Sarah Wolfe ’12 reflects on “The Big Draw: Middletown”

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Sarah Wolfe ’12 reflects on “The Big Draw: Middletown”, a public art event hosted by the Friends of the Davison Art Center.

In celebration of its 50th anniversary, the Friends of the Davison Art Center put together The Big Draw: Middletown this past Sunday. The event was intended to celebrate the art of drawing in its many forms and was a unique opportunity for drawers of all ages and skill levels to try their hand at different techniques for free!

Tableaux vivants. Image by Nam Anh Ta '12.

I had the pleasure of being a member of the student staff for the event. Tired and unhappy about the wet and dreary weather, I trudged over to the Davison Art Center Sunday morning to learn exactly what I would be doing. My attitude almost immediately improved as I watched about 15 Middletown High School students parade around the historic rooms of Davison dressed in costumes ranging from My Fair Lady to Pride and Prejudice to Kiss Me, Kate! That particular workshop, called “Tableaux Vivants” was organized by the students, who were members of the Middletown High School Art Club, provided an opportunity for participants to draw the costumed students in their historic setting.

I was placed at the Earth Day Collaborative Mural Project station. Stationed in the Art Workshops Lobby, I watched drawers aged 3 to 40 come and contribute a drawing of what they thought represented Earth Day on a huge piece of white paper on the wall. (“Go ahead, kids, you can actually draw on the walls today!”) The drawing skills ranged widely, as did the subject matter, the attention span, and the colors used. But by the end of the day, all of the staff was impressed by the beauty of what had been created with so many hands.

Earth Day Collaborative Mural Project. Image by Nam Anh Ta '12.

Nearby was the Scavenger Hunt, one of the activities that would have benefited from warmer, dryer weather. However, many families and students picked up a booklet to save for a later day. The hunt, entirely student designed, was a booklet of twelve different drawing challenges, ranging from: “Find a surface in nature with texture. What does it feel like? Make a rubbing of it by placing this page over and rubbing the side of your pencil on top” to “Draw a tree or a flower you see without looking at your page and without lifting your pencil.” Though there were some young boys who were disappointed with the lack of prizes involved with this particular scavenger hunt, most participants were excited to save it for a day they could do it outside.

Down the hall from where I was stationed was the Model Marathon, where supplies and a nude model were provided for participants to do some figure drawing. This was one of the most popular workshops in the event as it was a phenomenal opportunity for practice figure drawing without having to pay for a class.

These were only four of the ten workshops that were available for free to anyone who came and registered. Despite the grey weather, the turnout was good, and it was wonderful to see such a mix of Wesleyan students and outside community members participating in the joy of putting pencil/charcoal/marker to paper. There are plans to continue and grow the event, and I hope to see it become even more popular in the years to come.

Sarah Wolfe ’12 interviews Lily Haje ’13 about “Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights” (April 26-28)

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The Wesleyan Theater Department is presenting Gertrude Stein’s “Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights” this weekend. Ms. Stein’s play uses the traditional Faust story but departs to examine technology and industrialization as well as perceptions of the self. Earlier this week Sarah Wolfe ’12 sat down with cast member and Assistant Director Lily Haje ’13 to discuss the upcoming performance. The show opens this Thursday, April 26 and ends Saturday, April 28. 

Cast members of "Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights"

The Faust is a popular German legend that has been told most famously through Goethe’s “Faust” and Christopher Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus.” Can you give me a brief description, in your own words, of both the original legend and what Gertrude Stein has done to it?

The traditional Faust story is about a human scholar who tries to make a pact with the devil to exchange his soul for either ultimate knowledge or ultimate power. The Stein story is rather different. Instead of beginning with the moment of the pact, as the Goethe and the Marlowe do, she begins at the moment of collection. We don’t actually see Faustus make the pact with the devil. Also, rather than exchanging his soul for knowledge or power, this Faustus exchanges his soul for the ability to create electric light. Ms. Stein had been living in the U.S. when electricity had first come into common usage. She then moved to Paris, back to a place where they did not have universal electricity, and re-experienced the introduction of electricity and wrote this play. There’s a lot in it about the process of industrialization and man’s relationship to nature and man’s relationship to himself and to religion.

There is another character in Ms. Stein’s play named Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel. She exists outside of Faust’s urban, industrial, technical world, and she is both four women and one woman. The way we have her in the play she’s sometimes one, sometimes four, sometimes two, and sometimes five women. This brings up this idea that the play grapples with: what is the self and how are identities both singular and multiple.

The play is less about characters in a traditional realist sense than it is about the language, which is beautiful. There are very few words in the play that have more than two syllables. It’s very simple, very much everyday language that then is constructed in completely bizarre and wonderful ways. For example:

I am I and my name is Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel, and then oh then I could yes I could I could begin to cry by why why could I begin to cry.

And I am I and I am here and how do I know how wild the wild world is how wild the wild woods are…

How has Wesleyan adapted Gertrude Stein’s intentions for this play?

What Ms. Stein was writing about was the newest kind of technology. For her, electric light, which we take for granted now, was a completely innovative thing which opens up the world of what light is like. So we’ve been trying to take a similar approach to the show in terms of thinking about what is technology now. So we have lots and lots of lights, doing all kinds of crazy things. And we have a lot of projections, which is the most exciting new technology in theater that is still connected to light. It is all light, it is just a very different way of using light.

Furthermore, a lot of the production is not trying to hide what is not real. We have actors operating puppets, we have actors operating flashlights to operate the puppets. All of the masking goes away and you can see actors sitting on the side of the stage. All of the lighting instruments are visible. It’s very much about creating a theatrical event that is consciously a theatrical event. We have many people playing many different characters. With the exception of Mephisto [the devil], who is played by the same two people for the duration of the piece, pretty much every character gets played by multiple people, often at the same time. So it isn’t just Marguerite who is one and four and two and five, but Faust is also played by almost all of the men in the cast at one point or another. There are often two Fausts on stage at the same time.

The Theater Department has branched out in terms of design for this project. Designing sound is Demetrio Castellucci, of Dewey Dell. Designing lights is Ji-Youn Chang, a graduate of Yale School of Drama who previously collaborated with the Theater Department on The Tragedy of Richard III. Can you describe the experience and challenges of working with designers who were spread across the globe?

One of the things that’s both been cool and challenging about the process is that it is such a tech-heavy show. Demetrio only got in a week ago and Jiji was here a little before then. Everything that we’ve created has been videotaped and put on Dropbox so that Demetrio could be in London, seeing what we were doing and creating scores for it and same thing with Jiji and the lighting. It’s been fascinating to see how you can put a show together over huge distances. It has been a challenge given how much we interact with the lights and sound and projections, to not get those elements until very late, but now that we have them we’re working very intensely with them. 

What should the audience expect to take away from the show when they see it this weekend?

I think that it’s a show that benefits from watching it at face value first. Because it isn’t character driven in the traditional sense and because it isn’t plot driven in the traditional sense, I think the best way to watch it is without trying to make sense of it until it is over. There’s so much to look at and to hear and to engage with in it on its own terms before trying to analyze it. It does have a logic. It does make sense. But you kind of have to let it make sense instead of trying to make sense out of it.

Come see “Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights” at the CFA Theater, from Thursday, April 26 to Saturday, April 28. The show starts at 8pm.

Spotlight on Seniors: Sarah Wolfe ’12 interviews playwright Ben Firke ’12

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Ben Firke ’12 sits down with Sarah Wolfe ’12 to discuss his theater experience at Wesleyan, including the upcoming production of his play “Clem and Paul Build a Fort,” running March 1 to March 3 at 9pm in the ’92 Theater.

Ben Firke '12

Ben Firke ’12 has been writing plays for ten years, getting his start at theater camps when he was twelve. He was lucky enough to be able to see his in-progress scripts read by semi-professional actors, brought to the camp by director Elyse Singer, who runs the Hourglass Theater Company in New York City. These experiences, and finally getting to see his plays performed by the actors at the camp, gave him his first love for theater.

“I learned very early on in the process of being in theater to be flexible and roll with the punches. I learned that how you see it in your head isn’t how it’s going to be on stage, and also how it is in your head may actually be worse that what appears on stage. These actors know what they’re doing.”

This has been a motto for Firke as he’s written and produced plays while at Wesleyan. The plots of his scripts have been about as varied as the playwrights he considers inspirational, including his friend and mentor Amy Herzog (“4000 Miles”, “After the Revolution”, and “The Wendy Play”); Edward Albee (“The Zoo Story”, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”), who Firke was lucky enough to be pen-pals with for a time; Paula Vogel (go see “How I Learned to Drive” this weekend at 7pm in the ’92!); Sarah Ruhl (“Melancholy Play”, “Eurydice”); Ionesco; and Shakespeare.

Through Second Stage Firke has written and produced three plays, and directed two of them. The topics have been highly varied, from “How to Be a Man in West Belfast” (directed by Justin Wayne ’12), which was about growing up during the Troubles in Ireland, to his current project “Clem and Paul Build a Fort”, which opens this Thursday at 9pm in the ’92 Theater.

According to Firke, “Clem and Paul” is about “a bunch of young people who really care about doing the right thing but they don’t know what the right thing is.” The play addresses the concerns that all graduating seniors have, of what comes next, and how to make the right choices for the future, but it uses a unique lens to do so.

“Two students, Clem and Paul, have a one night stand, and ten months later Clem shows up and tells Paul that she’s decided to keep the kid, and he needs to decide whether he or not he’s going to be there for the kid.” More than just the issue of how to deal with early parenthood, the play is about the relationships that develop in college, between people who barely know each other and people who are already very comfortable with each other. Firke was especially interested in male friendships and how these relationships are different or similar to male-female relationships.

The Cast of "How to Be a Man in West Belfast"

Along with last spring’s “Shovels vs. Shubert”, which Firke wrote and directed, his fourth project at Wesleyan was also what he considered to be his first serious play, “Mark David Chapman: Live in Concert”. “It was a pretty dark drama about a record producer whose career has stagnated. He ends up producing an album (and then a concert) by Mark Chapman, the man who shot John Lennon, and how he finds himself identifying with rock n’ roll’s most notorious murderer.” It was done as a staged reading during Second Stage’s Outreach Weekend in the fall of 2008, but it was also produced in 2007 at the Blank Theater Company’s Young Playwrights Festival in Los Angeles. The production in this professional setting gave Firke an invaluable lesson in editing and working with constructive criticism.

What the budding playwright has learned throughout these experiences is that he just can’t quit –  not that he hasn’t tried. He related a notable experience in high school while working on a play that just wasn’t coming together. In the middle of his school’s library, he stood up, shut his computer and yelled “I’m done! I quit!” But sure enough, three days later, he was back at work again. His plans for after Wesleyan are still unclear, and he has wide interests including Government and Educational Policy, but he knows that no matter what he will continue writing plays and hoping to have people read and act them.

“Writing is a very solitary thing, you’re up in your own head space. And theater is a very different medium. But if I’m going to be a writer, I’m going to be a playwright, because that collaborative experience is something that I’d never trade for anything.”

Don’t miss “Clem and Paul Build a Fort” Thursday, March 1 through Saturday March 3 at 9pm in the ’92 Theater. Written and directed by Ben Firke ’12, Stage Managed by Jillian Ruben ’12 and starring Michelle Agresti ’14, Matt Lynch ’15, Eli Timm ’13 and Sarah Wolfe ’12.

Spotlight on Seniors: Sarah Wolfe ’12 interviews designer Evan DelGaudio ‘12

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Evan DelGaudio '12

Evan DelGaudio ’12 is a senior specializing in lighting and set design for theater and dance. A Theater and Math double major, he is also on Second Stage Staff, and has worked on more than eleven shows as a designer here, from lighting “Yalta” his first year here, to doing set and lights for “Pillowman” this past week, and more shows to come this spring! Sarah Wolfe ’12 sat down to talk with him earlier this week about design, Wesleyan, Second Stage, and the future!

Q. You transferred here from Brandeis. Why did you choose to do so and are you happy with the choice?

I knew when I was starting college that I wanted to be a math and theater double major, and I could have done that at Brandeis, but I really did not like the math department there. And the theater department seemed really focused on their graduate students. People I knew that were very talented as undergraduates had the privilege when they were seniors of assisting a grad student on a design. And I thought ‘that doesn’t sound like a great way to learn.’ I think it was pretty obvious midway through the year that I wanted to transfer. I don’t regret anything about my transferring experience, I think it worked out great. I feel totally integrated into Wesleyan.

"Waiting For Godot" Set

I joined Second Stage right at the end of my first semester in the fall. I knew student theater was something that I wanted to do, it was something I’d done in high school and at Brandeis, so I applied. It worked out well that the Buildings and Maintenance Liaison, who is in charge of scenery, was retiring at the end of that year, so it gave me a role to step up into. I’ve had a great experience on Second Stage staff and I’ll be on it until the end of this semester.

Q. What are your plans for after graduation (the dreaded question…)?

I’ve worked for the last three summers at The Weston Playhouse Theater Company, a small summer regional theater in Vermont. I’m going back for a fourth summer, this year I’m going to be the Assistant Technical Director. They’re summer only, so in September I’ll be looking for jobs, probably in New York or Boston, but definitely staying on this coast. I’ve thought about a lot of things, I’ve thought about going on tour for a while, I think that’s a good thing to do while you’re young, doing a Broadway Across America tour or seeing what kind of permanent employment is available – hopefully designing and doing my own shows on the side.

"Blackbird" Set

Q. Can you talk about your recent experience with “Pillowman”, which kicked off the spring Second Stage season? 

Nate and I knew we were going to “Pillowman” since April, and I think we both see it as our big capstone project. I think the thing that appealed to me about “Pillowman” is that it’s completely free. It’s very much a blending of realities, it allowed a lot.

Q. What’s your first step as a designer, after you’ve committed to doing a show?

It always starts with the text. I’m very glad that I’m a theater major, because I do enjoy reading the plays. People often ask ‘Why do you go to Wesleyan, because you don’t really learn set design or set construction like you would at a conservatory.’ But it’s because I do enjoy the study of theater and reading plays, so it always starts with the text, pulling out the mood, action and theme of this piece, what the story is that this team wants to tell. Talking with the director and really just tailoring the vision to what we’re trying to create in this one piece. And I think from there it’s just read the text a lot. Get to know it really well. For the shows that I did last fall, I really worked over the summer – I thought about “The Last Five Years” almost every day, listened to the music, a song or two, kept it in my head. You’re trying to create a world for this play to take place in, so I just try to completely immerse my brain in it.

"Icarus or an Angel" Set

There’s always some moment in tech week or production week where it finally feels like the vision is up on stage. A lot of the time I don’t enjoy the building or the painting of it. That’s the boring part, I want to see it up on stage. But there’s definitely a time when most of the scenery is up, everything is painted just right, and you see it with the actors on it. I’d say the best part for me is getting to the day when the actors can actually start playing on the set. I can have drawings of things and they look great, I can build something and it could look great, but until someone can walk on it it’s kind of useless.

Be sure to check out the other shows that Evan is working on this semester, including “Mao the Musical” (February 23-25), “Title of Show” (April 19-21) and “Urinetown” (March 10-12).

Nicholas Orvis ’13 discusses “The Great God Brown” (Nov. 16-19)

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This weekend Wesleyan’s Theater Department presents “The Great God Brown” by Eugene O’Neill, directed by Associate Professor Yuriy Kordonskiy. The play follows the life and conflicts of two men, Dion Anthony and Billy Brown, who are friends and rivals throughout their lives. Originally written for four actors, Mr. Kordonskiy has cast ten actors to portray the complexity of the relationships. Earlier this week, Sarah Wolfe ’12 sat down with Nicholas Orvis ’13, who is the Stage Manager for the show, to talk about the experience so far and what to expect this weekend.

Q: What do you think about Eugene O’Neill’s original play?

I think it’s a brilliant show. It’s a good chance for people to come see some of Eugene O’Neill’s edgier work. I actually have not liked most of the Eugene O’Neill I’ve read because a lot of it, especially Long Day’s Journey Into Night, I found dull and dragging. This one is a fast two and half hours (and that was after we cut 40% of the text). But it’s really a show where he took a lot of risks and created a really exciting, controversial, not simple piece of theater. It’s definitely not classroom Eugene O’Neill.

Q: Can you talk about how you’re doing this four character play with a cast of ten?

A lot of what the play deals with, is the idea is that we have multiple personas that we put forth. The way you act with your family is different than the way you act with your friends, and so on and so forth. O’Neill originally did this with the use of masks, which we are also using. But one thing we talked about in developing the play is that we think the idea that we have only two of these personas, our public one and our private one, is kind of an old fashioned, limited idea. So we decided to have multiple actors playing the same part. We have three men who are playing Dion. We have two women who are playing Margaret [the love interest], two women who are playing the fourth character, Cybel, who is a prostitute/mother figure to both of the men. And Billy Brown is played by one performer in the first half of the show and in the second half – I won’t spoil anything substantial by saying he begins to deteriorate and as he deteriorates we add more and more performers, so that by the end he is actually being played by five people simultaneously.

Q: Talk about the use of masks, and how that’s been in the rehearsal process with people who have used masks very little or not at all?

It’s been really great to watch. We began working with neutral mask (developed by Jacques LeCoq) while we were still reading the text. For a while we had parallel work with just the mask theory work and the text and discussion of the characters. At a certain point we merged them and began working with sketches of the character masks.

Q: Talk about working with Professor Yuriy Kordonskiy as a director.

Yuriy’s phenomenal. Watching him work with a cast is very rewarding. He has the ability to see choices in the text that make perfect sense but aren’t necessarily highlighted, but as soon as he suggests them, we all go “Ohh!” So that’s very exciting.

It’s been a little hectic too. He is a very well known director in Romania and there was actually a week in our rehearsal process where he was in Romania, opening a play that he had directed there over the summer. It was a good experience for all of us in the production, because it pushed us to work ourselves and to develop the material ourselves. At the same time it was a little bit terrifying because we thought, “What if he comes back and everything we’ve done is wrong? And then we’ve just lost the whole week of rehearsals!”

Q: What’s your favorite part of the rehearsal process been, do you think?

There’s always a point where it starts to come together in a way that it hasn’t before. When we cast the show, we didn’t put any of them in roles. So we spent a couple weeks working as a group with the text. We’d be switching roles around, we’d be doing multiple scenes at the same time with different size groups of people. Several weeks into the rehearsal process, Yuriy solidified the casting. That was the point where things really kicked into high gear.

Q: Has there been a particularly challenging part of the process, either for you or for the cast?

It is hard, because we have no one [in the cast] who has intensively worked with mask before, and mask is a very demanding aesthetic style. It’s very physically demanding, and there are also a lot of technical challenges. Making yourself heard is much harder when you’re wearing a full-face mask. So that’s been a challenge but they’ve risen to it beautifully.

Come see “The Great God Brown”, this weekend in the CFA Theater. Tickets are on sale now and selling fast. This exciting show is not one you will want to miss.

In addition to Orvis, the ensemble includes Bennet Kirschner ’13 as Assistant Director, Mandy Goldstone-Dahlin ‘12, Emily Hunt ‘13, Jake Hunt ‘12, Zachary Libresco ‘13, Paulie Lowther ‘13, Cat Lum ‘12, Joey Mehling ‘14, Julian Silver ‘12, Anna Sproule ‘14, and Eli Timm ’13. Performances are 8pm on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday; and 2pm and 8pm on Saturday.

Will Levitt ’12 and Damiano Marchetti ’12 Discuss Their Hobby: Sandwiches

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Sarah Wolfe ’12 speaks with Will Levitt ’12 and Damiano Marchetti ’12 about their Wesleyan Farmer’s Market venture, DW Sandwiches.

I sat down earlier this week with the two seniors who make sandwiches at the bi-weekly Farmer’s Market. Their sandwiches, ranging from Beet Tzatziki and White Bean to Sweet Potato and Coleslaw to Roasted Cauliflower with Quick Pickled Carrots and Leek Mayonnaise, are both diverse and incredibly tasty, speaking as someone who has sampled every single one. Each time the ingredient list surprises me, and yet each time I walk away satisfied, satiated, and impressed.

Will Levitt ’12 and Damiano Marchetti ‘12 have both been cooking since they were young and have continued to make cooking a priority while at Wesleyan, from using the tiny, cramped Nicolson kitchen to finally having their own full kitchen as seniors.

Levitt, originally from Boston, MA, began cooking with his childhood friend. When their passion for food became apparent, Levitt’s mother invited them to cook a large dinner she was having. The middle schoolers cooked cod, salmon, mashed potatoes and a few other dishes to rave reviews. This dinner led to another catering request which led to Levitt’s first small time catering business – as a seventh grader. He’s been cooking ever since, as well as writing about food on his blog, called The Dorm Room Dinner.

Marchetti doesn’t necessarily plan to make food his career, but has inherited the values of home cooking from a life time of helping cook family dinners at his home in Napa, CA. He continues to enjoy home cooked meals and the excitement of cooking from scratch. Recently his specialties have branched out to desserts, making a variety of homemade ice creams (Caramel and Chamomile Raspberry to name a couple) and delicious cakes.

When they met freshman year, the two bonded over their mutual love of homemade pasta, fresh baked bread and essentially anything else they could craft in a kitchen. Living together in Hi-Rise last year, they started to cook dinner for themselves and friends almost every night of the week. Feeling cramped in the narrow, windowless kitchen, they decided to expand their cooking repertoires and invite the world to experience their home-cooked, inventive recipes.

For the sandwiches, they wanted to support local farms and businesses, as well as making sure their produce was fresh and largely organic. In that vein, for every sandwich they make, they travel to a number of local farms, picking produce that is in season to craft their next sandwich around. The sandwiches are often on baguettes made by a local baker, Howard of Chester, CT. With all the travel, including the time it takes to test recipes and actually prepare the sandwiches at the market, the venture is truly a labor of love and proof of their dedication to their kitchen-based craft.

Next time you wander through the Farmer’s Market, be sure to stop at the newly named DW Sandwiches. Levitt and Marchetti will be there, serving up delicious combinations of fresh, local veggies on fresh, local breads!

Julian Silver ’12 and Michaela Swee ’12 discuss Second Stage

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Sarah Wolfe ’12 talks with Julian Silver ’12 and Michaela Swee ’12 about their Second Stage experiences.

If you like to get involved in theater on campus, Second Stage’s presence is exciting and vibrant. Starting the first week of each semester, Wesleying is flooded with audition notices and calls for Stage Managers, Board Ops, Technicians, and Musicians. Some look by these and wait for opening night to see what Second Stage has decided to offer up this week, but there are some who make a point of never missing an audition. Earlier this week I sat down with Julian Silver ’12 and Michaela Swee ’12, two seniors who claim to have a “why not?” attitude when it comes to auditioning for shows.

“You don’t end up doing it all obviously, but the experience of auditioning is just priceless,” says Silver, and Swee agrees wholeheartedly. But for two who claim to not “do it all”, they’ve had an impressive run of shows in their time at Wesleyan. If you’ve gone to see Second Stage shows in the last three and a half years, you’ve undoubtedly seen one or both of them, featured in shows ranging from Comedy to Mystery to Musical.

Swee, a Psychology major, has been in seven shows, while Silver has been in a whopping eleven (with at least one more planned for the spring).

The two made an effort since becoming friends freshman year to perform together as much as possible. That wish became a reality in How to Be a Man in West Belfast (written and directed by Ben Firke ’12), Glass Menagerie(A Performance Project dir. Bennett Kirschner ’13), Black Comedy (dir. Shelby Arnold ’12  and Samantha Melvin ’12) and the recent production of Dog Sees God, which marks Swee’s last performance at Wesleyan, as she is graduating in December.

Both of them noted The Glass Menagerie as one of the most interesting experiences they’ve had at Wesleyan.“[It] was a pretty insane experience,” mused Swee. “I think that was the most frightening experience I’ve ever had as an actor.”

The reason for this was simple: the actors, under the direction of Kirschner, were told at the beginning of the process that they were not going to rehearse with each other. Instead, they rehearsed individually with Kirschner and had improvised family dinners between the actors playing Amanda (Ariela Rotenberg ’10), Tom (Silver) and Laura (Swee). Swee and Matt Alexander ’12, who played Jim (her gentleman caller) were not even allowed to see each other outside of rehearsals. The first time they interacted was in the play, on opening night, creating a very real environment of new interactions between the four characters.

Though both of them related the doubts they had at the beginning of the process, they came to value this production as one of the “most productive” in their careers here, simply for the challenges it offered.  “That is a testament to Wesleyan, and Second Stage in particular,” noted Silver. “It offers the opportunity to people to offer themselves. Some freshman can come up and say, I don’t want to rehearse the cast with each other!”

Beyond Glass Menagerie, Swee’s favorite productions at Wesleyan were Songs for a New World (dir. Elizabeth Trammell ’10) and Dog Sees God. The two shows are a good representative of the variety that Second Stage presents. One is a musical cabaret of sorts, filled with haunting, beautiful, occasionally comic and often tragic songs and no dialogue. On the other hand, Dog Sees God is an often funny, sometimes darkly disturbing glimpse into what could happen if the characters from the beloved comic strip “Peanuts” were to grow up and go to high school. Swee’s experiences could have been polar opposites. Yet in both her strongest memory is the joy of rehearsal – for Songs for a New World it was getting to sing with and look up to some of Wesleyan’s finest singers, and for Dog Sees God it was discovering the joy of a silly, over the top character who enlivened her fellow actors throughout the rehearsal process.

For Silver, a particularly notable experience was Dead Sharks (written by Will Dubbs ’14, dir. Dakota Gardner ’11) in which the cast traveled to New York City to perform the play as part of Manhattan Reperatory Theater’s Winterfest 2011. “We all got to go to New York and take the train every weekend with each other, so that was a cast bonding experience like one I’ve never experienced before. And it was semi-professional. That was one of the first times I walked out into the audience and I didn’t know anyone except a couple people.”

Other than Dead Sharks, Silver cited Yalta (written by Elizabeth Gauvey-Kern ’11 and directed by Gauvey-Kern and Hannah Weiss ’12) as one of the most challenging for him as an actor. He played President Roosevelt in the three hour production detailing the events of the Yalta conference. On another note, he too found one of his favorites in Dog Sees God, in which he played Matt (Pig Pen). He called the process for that, as well as Black Comedy, “pure fun”.

Both Silver and Swee continually come back to the people of Second Stage when discussing their past experiences. “The plays come and go,” Silver says, “but I haven’t regretted any of the experiences just because of the people I’ve been able to work with throughout the process. It never fails – the people who work in theater who are willing to put themselves out there in Second Stage, are consistently some of the most creative people on campus.”

Their experiences, from the variety of shows they’ve been in to their own growth as performers, truly speaks to the function of Second Stage. Both Swee and Silver knew they wanted to do theater at Wesleyan, but chose not to be theater majors and to instead pursue theater in an extra curricular form. Through their excitement in the audition process and their willingness to sign on to a huge variety of performances and directors, they have created an impressive repertoire of roles. And yet in reflecting back on their years here, their joy chiefly lies in the process of putting together a show rather than with opening night or the curtain call.

Both Swee and Silver plan to somehow include theater in their lives post-college. Though Swee plans on pursuing Forensic Psychology and Silver is moving to L.A. to try his hand at the film world, they both discussed the importance of theater in their lives, and their unwillingness to let it fall behind.

“I definitely want theater, and film,” says Michaela, “to be a part of my life… It’s such a crucial part of who I am as a person that I can’t really see living a life without it.”

Sarah Wolfe ’12 previews “The Last Five Years”

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Sarah Wolfe ’12 interviews Sara Schineller ’12 about Second Stage’s “The Last Five Years”.

This weekend Second Stage presents its first full production of the season, The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown. In a semester with a high quantity of musicals, Brown’s piece offers us a different take on musicals. The story follows two people, a man and a woman, traveling in reverse directions through the course of their relationship. The woman, Cathy, played by Sara Schineller ‘12, starts at the end of the relationship and the man, Jamie, played by Spencer Hattendorf ’12, starts at the beginning. They only meet once in the show, at the midpoint. Instead of glitz, glamour, or high kicks, Brown simply tells story of a relationship, using his wonderfully courageous music to illustrate the emotional ups and downs.

I spoke with Schineller last week about the show and the process so far. The senior, a double Theater and Psychology major, has dreamed of doing this show the entire time she’s been at Wesleyan.

“I had been waiting, hoping, fingers crossed that someone would do this show before I graduated. Senior year comes around, and there is no show yet.” So she decided to take matters into her own hands. She has been passionate about the show for eight years, claiming that the incredible soundtrack has served as her music of choice through almost any period of her life. Realizing that it would be difficult to make the production work as a Senior Thesis project for either major, she decided to take advantage of Second Stage and the amazing student talent on campus.

“I was talking to Dylan Zwickel [‘14], and she was looking to direct a small cast musical for the fall.” Zwickel, a member of Second Stage, is a first time director, and Schineller says her enthusiasm and dedication to the piece has been inspiring. With Zwickel on board, they quickly assembled a team including Hattendorf, Brianna Van Kan ’12 as the Stage Manager, Brian Lee ’13 as the Music Director, Evan DelGaudio ’12 as the Set Designer and Ross Firestone ’12 as the Lighting Designer.

The singers, Hattendorf and Schineller, spent the summer learning the music so that they could immediately jump into rehearsals. With only four weeks between the first rehearsal and opening night, Schineller says that the process has been intense, but incredibly rewarding. With a small cast and crew, the rehearsals have been collaborative and open to feedback from all parties, while still relying on the crucial outside eye of the director.

Schineller views this show as something of a capstone project for her time at Wesleyan, and has been able to use her experiences at Wesleyan to help her character, and the show, come to life.

“I feel like for a Theater and Psych major this show is sort of a gold mine,” she quipped. Though her acting classes are obvious contributors, the senior also credited her ability to analyze aspects of the marriage and how each character holds fault in different ways to her various classes in the Psychology department.

At the end of our interview I asked Schineller if there was one thing she would say to Jason Robert Brown, given the opportunity. She responded, “I would probably tell him (aside from being a God among men) how much something that he wrote has meant to me. It’s got heart. I think that’s the thing, is that it’s very real. So I would tell him thank you.”

“The Last Five Years” by Jason Robert Brown goes up at the ’92 Theater on Thursday, September 29 and runs through Saturday, October 1 at 8pm. Tickets are FREE and available the day of the show at the Wesleyan University Box Office.

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