Amidst campus-wide discussions of sexual assault and its prevalence at Dartmouth, theater minor Laura Neill '13 penned a play called "Faking It," a work that discusses the issue of sexual violence from dual timelines. The play was performed over the last two weekends in the Bentley Theater at the Hopkins Center for the Arts.
The action occurs during two chronological points in time the first is during the main characters' sophomore year at a small rural college, and the second takes place nine years in the future in New York City. Through these two time periods, the play aims to convey the long-term implications of certain sexual choices.
"I wanted to show the lasting impact that events can have on someone's life because I think all too often we get stuck in this idea of something happens now, but you'll be fine later," Neill said of her decision to focus on separate timelines in the play. "That's not exactly true, but that doesn't very often get addressed."
"Faking It" starred Veronique Lecocq '13 as Steph, who organizes an alumni dinner centered on the issue of sexual assault almost a decade after graduating from college. Previously, she had been traumatized by a sexual encounter with her ex-boyfriend Chuck, played by Jaymes Sanchez '13. Sanchez also directed the production.
In the other timeline, Linda played by Kate Taylor '13 a female undergraduate, falls in love with Mannie, portrayed by Will Hernandez '13, and experiences a similar instance of sexual assault. Linda later confronts this experience at Steph's dinner, at which Mannie is present.
According to Sanchez, portraying the two timelines was a challenging task.
"Going back and forth between time periods was difficult because there were costumes, there's set, there's certain things we went over as actors," he said. "There were subtle things."
Regarding the sensitive subject matter of the play, Neill said she became interested in sexual assault awareness when she attended the "Women of Dartmouth" panel during her freshman Spring, which in part inspired the plot of "Faking It."
"The panel kind of opened my eyes to this issue on campus," she said. "I think just seeing college students, seeing Dartmouth students go through things like assault on stage helps people to reflect what their friends and what their acquaintances might be going through."
She added that a staged production regarding this subject might help viewers understand that their friends are not always as "happy as they say they are," and that people often contend with issues like assault that are not always apparent.
The timeliness of the issue of sexual assault affected the production and rehearsal process, according to Taylor, who is a Sexpert and has been involved in sexual assault awareness.
"We definitely talked about sexual assault a lot through the rehearsal process, how it related to Dartmouth and how it related to our lives personally," Taylor said. "I think it certainly was really relevant."
Taylor said the play was not meant to blame any individuals, but meant to view sexual assault from a "very honest perspective."
"We did a very good job at giving a couple of perspectives on this issue," she said. "I hope that audiences took away an ability to kind of reflect on their time here and their experiences with the social scene or with sexual assault or with the hook-up culture."
While perpetrators of sexual assault are certainly a significant threat to the Dartmouth community, Neill said, she was mostly interested in addressing the overall issue.
"It's not a finger-pointing play," she said. "It's more along the lines of, there's something wrong that we as a community have to deal with."
In addition to the problem of sexual assault, "Faking It" also addressed the feeling of superficiality at Dartmouth, Taylor said.
"It touched in that idea that everyone pretends things are alright when they're not," she said.
"I think it was a really accurate, thoughtful description of the fraternity culture," Georgia Travers '13, who attended the play, said. "It kind of showed the diversity of threats and dangers of assault, alcohol and college hookup culture."
Performances of "Faking It" took place on Aug. 12, 19, 14 and 21 in the Bentley Theater in the Hopkins Center. The production was partially funded by a grant from the Winthrop Bean Fund and was sponsored by both the Dartmouth theater department and the Displaced Theater Company.
Staff writers Sophia Archibald and Priya Krishna contributed reporting to this article.
