{"id":3635,"date":"2018-03-23T10:00:51","date_gmt":"2018-03-23T14:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.pages.roanoke.edu\/?p=3635"},"modified":"2018-03-23T10:00:51","modified_gmt":"2018-03-23T14:00:51","slug":"theatre-roanoke-colleges-winter-production-captivates-audiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/?p=3635","title":{"rendered":"Theatre Roanoke College\u2019s Winter Production Captivates Audiences"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Bradley Bommarito<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Feb. 21, Theatre Roanoke College\u2019s winter production, \u201cThe Shape of Things,\u201d<\/span> premiered in Olin Theater. \u00a0The play ran through Saturday night. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have had an enthusiastic response from the students, but there have also been many local adult theatre-goers. \u00a0I sat with the audience every night and watched the audiences gasp, snap approval, get the jokes, and react openly to the characters. \u00a0It has been fun watching them react to our work,\u201d said Dr. Lisa Warren, director of \u201cThe Shape of Things\u201d<\/span> and associate professor of fine arts at Roanoke.<\/span><\/p>\n

The college\u2019s production is an adaptation of American playwright Neil LaBute\u2019s critically acclaimed screenplay. LaBute is the author of many works for stage and screen, including \u201cAutobahn,\u201d \u201cIn The Company of Men,\u201d and \u201cThe Mercy Seat.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHow far would you go for love? For art? What price would you be willing to pay? Neil LaBute’s \u2018The Shape of Things\u2019 will challenge your ideas about art and love and continue \u2018his fascination with the power games men and women play,\u2019\u201d wrote a New York Post<\/span> columnist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Warren said Theatre Roanoke College selected this play for production because it presented new opportunities and challenges for the program. \u00a0Additionally, it contained relatable subject matter.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI normally choose plays because they provide active learning opportunities for students, and I chose \u2018The Shape of Things\u2019 because it offered challenging roles for the actors and because the characters are college students. I hoped it would resonate with RC students, and I think it did. \u00a0I also chose it as a contrasting style to the play I did in the fall, \u2018The Trickeries of Scapin,\u2019\u201d said Warren.<\/span><\/p>\n

The cast and production crew enjoyed the unique challenges of the play. They worked tirelessly to make the play successful.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis has been by far my favorite play that I\u2019ve been a part of,\u201d said junior Katie Soper, who played the lead role as Evelyn. \u201cThis was my fifth play at Roanoke and it was such an amazing experience. \u00a0The script is so dense with internal monologue, which made it a challenge to perform, but also just that much more interesting,\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

The four actors spent many hours memorizing lines and rehearsing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe rehearsal process was broken down into a lot of one on one time with the character relationships,\u201d said Soper. \u201cThe personal connection each of us had to our characters was very important. \u00a0Dr. Warren made sure that we found an understanding of ourselves in the characters we were playing,\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTo prepare for this play, we rehearsed almost every day from 7 until 10 p.m.,\u201d said junior Kimberly Dalton, who played Jenny. \u201cActors were also expected to work on lines outside of rehearsal in order to have memorization down by the week before tech week. \u00a0There was a lot of experimenting with blocking and tone to make sure that pacing and staging worked as well as it could.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps the most time-consuming challenge consisted of mastering the emotional nuances of the complex characters.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPlaying Evelyn was a very unique experience, I haven\u2019t had to opportunity to play such a manipulative character before, so it was quite thrilling to feel out that role,\u201d said Soper. \u201cWhile Evelyn\u2019s actions are undoubtedly heartless, I do truly believe that she is not entirely evil, she was simply caught up in the fantasy of it all. I think that to portray any \u2018evil\u2019 character truthfully, you have to find the glimmer of goodness that they have. Very few characters are innately bad, and if you portray them in such a flat way the audience isn\u2019t able to fully commit to and understand the character.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Dalton offered a few more details about her character, Jenny.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cJenny is timid and shaped by her gender role; she dislikes confrontation and vulgarity, making her quiet and a bit of a prude,\u201d she said. \u201cShe’s very sweet, although she does make some not-so-great decisions. \u00a0One of my favorite parts of playing this character was being engaged in her development from doormat to a woman with a backbone; she really learns to advocate for herself. I don’t have a lot in common with Jenny except for nervousness when it comes to defending oneself, but I’ve gone through similar self-discovery periods in my life and was therefore able to slip into her shoes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The stage design for this production was a noteworthy departure from tradition. \u00a0Production members decided on a minimalistic setup that correlated with the play\u2019s themes, in addition to an on-stage seating arrangement.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI am very pleased with the final results,\u201d said Warren. \u201cThe on-stage seating was a new design by Technical Director\/Set Designer, Rob Bessolo, and it worked beautifully. \u00a0His simple design allowed the focus to be on the acting, and it also worked with our concept that each scene was actually an event that would have been part of Evelyn\u2019s final project, so it made sense to have those scenes take place on the display pedestals eventually used in her project. \u00a0Jenny Ruhland\u2019s costumes brought color and helped delineate the characters.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Shape of Things\u201d<\/span> explores themes involving art, the subjectivity of truth, and morality.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI found myself agreeing with a lot of Evelyn’s comments on art,\u201d Dalton said. \u201cI think the play is an interesting thought experiment about where the boundaries are in art and whether or not there are any. \u00a0At its core, art is a subjective medium, and there is a lot of debate about the subjectivity of morality; when the two come together it creates an interesting grey area which came alive through these characters.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Roanoke\u2019s next production, \u201cAn Evening of Albee,\u201d premieres on April 11 at 7:30 p.m. It will run through April 14. It includes two one-act plays by playwright Edward Albee. They are \u201cThe American Dream.\u201d a dark comedy, \u00a0and \u201cThe Zoo Story,\u201d a gripping drama about a bizarre confrontation in New York’s Central Park.<\/span><\/p>\n

All productions are free to RC students. Adults can purchase tickets for $7 at the RC Box Office in Olin Hall or online at Eventbrite.com. \u00a0Senior and student tickets cost $5. Members of the community are encouraged to attend to support future theater productions.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Bradley Bommarito On Wednesday, Feb. 21, Theatre Roanoke College\u2019s winter production, \u201cThe Shape of Things,\u201d premiered in Olin Theater. \u00a0The play ran through Saturday night. \u201cWe have had an enthusiastic response from the students, but there have also been many local adult theatre-goers. \u00a0I sat with the audience every night and watched the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Things2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}