In 60 minutes, “Too Much Light Makes the Baby go Blind” will cover material from the College’s slang to the recent change in international student financial aid policy. Ariel Klein ’17 and Naomi Lazar ’17, both members of the Displaced Theater Company, are producing the series of 30 skits in 60 minutes.
The Neo-Futurists, a Chicago-based theater company, originally created the concept of “Too Much Light Makes a Baby Go Blind” with an eponymous show. Amber Porter ’14 brought the piece to Dartmouth in winter 2014 with the help of the Displaced Theater Company, Klein said.
Klein and Lazar took leadership of the Displaced Theater Company in spring 2014.
“The Displaced Theater Company’s mission is to provide theater opportunities specifically to non-majors or people in general who have some kind of interest in performing theater, writing, directing or anything really but don’t necessarily have the time to commit to main stage,” Klein said.
The company focuses on a collective work environment, and all members contribute to the playwriting and directing process, she said.
“The cast completely originates the ideas, write them ourselves, directs them collaboratively and then performs them,” Klein said.
Jenny Seong ’16 participated in multiple parts of the production process.
“We all wrote, directed and produced skits,” she said.
To get people involved, the company reached out to previous participants, friends, people recommended by professors and the general campus via listserv, she said.
The group has been working on the production for the past four weeks with an average of five hours of practice a week, Klein said.
“We’ve had about 25 people circle in and out throughout the process, in some capacity,” she said
Currently there are about 13 performers for this weekend’s shows, Klein said.
The 30 pieces in “Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind” range from lighthearted to serious.
“We have cheesy pick-up lines — literally pick-up lines about cheese. We have a lot of British accents going on for some reason this time around. We have something called ‘Confessions of a Frat Dog,’” Klein said.
Klein said that they started with around 85 different ideas and pared it down to 30, but that the flexible structure of the play allows them to edit the roster of plays up until the last minute.
“Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind” depends on audience participation for the order of the show.
“Part of the fun of the form of this piece is that the audience gets to chose the order we perform the skits in,” she said. “They get a list of all the titles in the show, and there are numbers associated with each title. They are in an order, and based on whichever title sounds most interesting to the audience, they call out that number and we perform the show in the audience’s order of choice.”
The hope is that students will engage with the non-traditional format of the show.
“I’m excited about the experimental aspect. How it changes the traditional structure of the play and is a fun new twist on the idea of a continuous story line,” Victoria Rowe ’17, who is playing on seeing the show, said.
Due to the variable nature of the show, props and costumes have to be easily adaptable.
“It’s a really low-tech production overall. We don’t have any costumes for the most part, though we might be using some fake moustaches. We really rely on the good old piece of paper taped to your shirt to identify who you are in a scene,” Klein said.
Props are sourced from friends and the theater department, she said.
“Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind” will be playing in the Bentley Theater at the Hopkins Center on Saturday, Oct. 17, at 9 p.m. and Sunday, Oct. 18, at 5 p.m. Admission is free.
