Written by contemporary playwright and recent MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant recipient Ruhl, the play highlights the banality of daily life in New York City through protagonist Gordon, played by Maximillian Saint-Preux '15, whose final day of life is realized on stage. This depiction of quotidian life is contrasted with a surreal film-noir dramatization, however, particularly of the events that follow his death.The play humorously follows the ways in which one cell phone can throw together six individuals after Gordon's cell phone is found by a stranger, while also providing commentary on today's technology-dependent society.
During the first week of Winter term, students had the opportunity to present proposals for a play that they wanted to produce, according to Carolan. The theater department then reviewed the written proposals and selected Carolan's, granting her $400 to produce "Dead Man's Cell Phone."
"The proposal is your personal argument about why this play is relevant to the Dartmouth community," Carolan said. "You also need to have your production team ready, including your advisors."
Carolan said she became familiar with the play after performing a number of scenes from it in her acting class last spring.
"It has a really weird humorous tone it's very original," Carolan said. "[Ruhl's play] does have allusions to film noir, and its bearings are in older stuff, but it's very much its own thing."
After her proposal was approved, Carolan held auditions. Although there were a number of other major productions going on this term, including "Hairspray," "The Vagina Monologues" and "Dartmouth Idol," Carolan said she was more than able to find actors that were right for each part of the play.
"We had nine full weeks this term and spent eight of them in production," Carolan said. "I could have worked on this play forever, but I've also worked on WiRED,' and I knew I could pull it together in 24 hours."
The cast included Chris Gallerani '15 as Gordon's underappreciated younger brother, Hannah Coleman '15 as Gordon's jealous widow, Saida Makhmudzade '14 as Gordon's grieving mother, Lizzy Southwell '15 as Gordon's mistress and Svati Narula '13 as Jean, the woman who finds Gordon's phone in a cafe after he dies.
The actors had varying amounts of acting experience, both in the classroom and in student productions on campus, though Carolan said this was not an impediment to the production process.
"It is a very professional group," Carolan said. "The cast learned their lines really quickly, and we've been able to change things in terms of blocking and really add layers of emotional depth to the production that usually we wouldn't get to until dress rehearsals or opening night."
Narula said that she auditioned for the show because it was something she wanted to try in her time on campus, though she had not participated in a Dartmouth theater production before.
"[Carolan] had us do all these exercises to think about our characters and their background," Narula said. "In the past, I thought that acting was about reading lines emphatically, so it was a little weird at first."
Ultimately, the director's vision is of paramount importance, but Carolan has been mindful to include actors' feedback on her suggestions, because the actors "live in their roles," according to Saint-Preux. If the actors do not understand a change, the new movement or gesture will feel false, he said.
Carolan wanted to emphasize the film-noir aspects of the production, according to Southwell. For her own role as the mistress, Southwell discussed with Carolan her character's awareness of her physical appearance and how others perceive her.
"[Carolan] has been really specific about how she wanted the play to look, but she also really wanted me to build my own character," she said.
The strength of the play comes primarily from its script Ruhl's crisp, clean lines allow humor to shine through. At Gordon's funeral, for instance, Jean, who does not know who Gordon is until he is already dead, kneels down to pray after finding the dead man's cell phone.
Carolan's strong directing was also evident in her attention to detail. In one exchange between Makhmudzade and Narula, for example, the power struggle between Gordon's mom and Jean is visible through Makhmudzade's blase performance. First, she dips her hand into a bowl of foil-wrapped chocolates on the table between them, swirling the candies around before picking out a good one. A few seconds after popping it into her mouth, she makes a distasteful face, puts the candy back into the bowl and digs around for a new piece.
Some of Ruhl's overt criticism of contemporary cell phone dependence felt a little stale, but on the whole, her commentary was refreshing and comical.
The play occasionally stumbled when the quirks of the production became too unrealistic. In most cases, the actors handled Ruhl's eccentricities well, such as when Makhmudzade stroked and murmured to her Bengal tiger floor rug. In the moments, however, where the characters seemed aware of the absurdity of their own actions or broke character and laughed at their lines, the effectiveness of the scenes was lost.
Many scenes required cast members to truly take control of the stage as individual actors, which they did with considerable success. Saint-Preux was particularly strong in both conveying Gordon's panicked thoughts and his eventual physical breakdown as he experiences a heart attack in a cafe. Makhmudzade was also wonderful, playing Gordon's mother with both composure and anger at her son's funeral.
As a whole, the cast was very successful at assembling the many moving parts of the play into a cohesive production. Carolan cited the transitions between scenes as one of the biggest challenges of the production during "tech week" the week before the opening night but the heavily stylized music between scenes and the clever ways in which actors interacted with the moving parts of the set linked disparate scenes together and added an element of humor.
Each student on the production team worked with an individual faculty advisor, and Carolan worked specifically with theater professor Jamie Horton to aid her in directing, she said. There have been about seven faculty advisors total assisting in the production process, as well as help from the costume shop, stage crew and light and sound crew. All included, about 50 people worked on the production.
Although the cast worried about audience attendance because of overlaps with various other performances, Bentley was more than half full on Friday evening, and the show received a rousing applause at its conclusion.
