Eleven student-writers and directors were up late Friday night real late. The students were brainstorming, writing and producing five original plays for WiRED, the 24-hour playwriting event that culminated in a performance at 8 p.m. on Saturday night in a packed Bentley theater.
As with every WiRED festival, everything began with the unveiling of "the rule," the one necessary element each pair of writers had to incorporate into their plays. This year, the natural elements of the play had to be altered by the discovery of a magical object, production manager Maria Carolan '12 said.
"Each year, we choose a theme to hinder and inspire the playwrights," Carolan said.
The theme is always a surprise, in order to prevent writers from preparing any material before the start of the 24-hour period. Armed with the prompt, the writers and directors split themselves into four pairs and one group of three and got to work.
Laura Neill '13 said she and her co-writer, Jaymes Sanchez '13, began by throwing ideas around, to see what would stick.
"We'd start by tossing out character types, and just see where they went," she said. "Hi, I'm Houston. I'm from Texas. My parents are from Texas as well. You can probably tell."
None of these characters became the basis for her play, Neill said, but the exercise got the creative juices flowing.
"We just talk at each other until something clicks," she said. "It's just silly, and you have fun with it."
Neill said the next step was to go over story ideas. She and Sanchez developed three full outlines before settling on the plot that would be the basis of their play, "Off Book."
"They [the production staff] feed us, so that helps," she said. "It's a surprisingly professional work environment. We're laughing, telling jokes, but things get done."
The writers and directors are all student volunteers, and no experience was necessary for them to participate. They ranged in experience from theater majors and minors to first-time playwrights. By 2 a.m., the writers were printing the first drafts of their plays, and by 6 a.m., they were printing polished though not finalized scripts.
At the 12-hour mark, student actors arrived at the Hopkins Center to audition for roles and by 10 a.m., the production manager posted a casting list, Carolan said. Each play included four to 11 actors, and most writers performed in their own plays as well. In total, there were about 25 actors, with some performing in two or three plays.
By noon, rehearsals began throughout the Hopkins Center: in Bentley, music practice rooms or hallways. Carolan ran around with a list of props for the plays, tracking down anything from a non-descript brown blanket, candlesticks (preferably with candles), a cigarette case or a red feather boa. Sanchez referred to the storage area endearlingly, saying, "It's like Narnia in there."
Co-production manager Diane Chen '14, who also acted in three plays, made a much-appreciated errand run Saturday morning for provisions: coffee from Dunkin Donuts, snacks from CVS and bagels from Bagel Basement.
"This is absolutely essential," Chen said at 1 p.m., describing her coffee mug. "I'm pretty sure I have pure java in my veins."
Throughout the afternoon, writers and actors worked through scenes, modifying their scripts and blocking out where and how actors should move as they went along. Actors usually do not memorize their lines and often bring their scripts on stage for the WiRED performance.
By 8 p.m., over 100 students filled Bentley Theater to watch the performances. Each play ran for about 15 minutes.
"The Dark Lord of the Maleficent Malodorous Manor of Dread and Despair," written and directed by Sharang Biswas '12 and Veronica Haakonsen '12, ran first. The play told a hilarious tale of a Dark Lord, played by Max Hunter '13, who longs to live amid the romantic poetry of Wordsworth, but finds himself depressed by the ghouls and blood splatters that his job entails. Igor, his maniacal servant, usurps the Dark Lord after discovering the meaning of existentialism and realizing his full potential.
The mood shifted in the second play, "An Interview," written and directed by Davide Savenije '12 and Eileen Vogl '12. The play was in four loosely joined parts exploring the sometimes-paradoxical relationship between pharmaceutical companies and the cancer patients they treat.
Savenije had noted in rehearsal that "subtlety is not usually our style." The play, however, was extremely polished and well-acted. Beyond the actual dialogue, Savenije and Vogl suggested just enough irony to the audience, whether through a character's smoking of a cigarette or someone's change in tone.
The third play, "Off Book," by Neill and Sanchez, brought back a note of levity. The play focused on two theater classmates performing a scene from Oliver Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" one disillusioned upperclassman, played by Sanchez, and one happily determined freshman, played by James Kennedy '14.
The interactions between the actors enamored the crowd. Kennedy's happy-go-lucky attitude and lyrical acclaim for "the theater," rubbed just right against Sanchez's jaded deadpan. The jokes were well-suited for Dartmouth students, and Sanchez's flubbing of Agamemnon for Algernon never failed to garner giggles. The magical object in this play was a ghost the theater professor conjured to scare the two students into cooperating.
Next was "Occupation," by Nathan Gusdorf '12 and Deanna Portero '12, a play concerned with a protestor in the Occupy Wall Street movement, played by Lizzy Southwell '15, who travels in time to experience reactions by various involved parties: protestors, police, judges. But the playwrights were overly ambitious. Between Southwell's flailing to connote each time change, quotes concerning the nature of madness and a small cast of characters triple-cast within the same play, the plot was hard to follow.
Finally, the night ended in the absurd, with "Love Story Part 1, Part 2," written and directed by Jacob Batchelor '12, Daniel Cushing '12 and Eric Olson '12, a pop-culture parody about a radio song that brings love to all but one man. The jokes were lewd and crude, but brought uproars of laughter from the audience. In the end, clichd love prevails, and the cast joined in a rousing chorus of Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles."
Batchelor is a member of The Dartmouth Opinion Staff.
