Date:
2/25/2010
Contact: Wendel Sloan at 575.562.2253
Reporter: Robin Haislett
PORTALES--Eastern New Mexico University will show the first installment of its Saturday Night Lab theater performances on Saturday, March13 at 7 p.m. in the Studio Theater of the University Theatre Center on the Portales campus.
The performances are completely student-run from selecting the script, editing, auditioning and other elements of creating a play for each student director.
The directors are Jacob Senn of Portales, Vanessa Kahin of Roswell and Jeff Darnell of Hobbs. The other students in the advanced directing class will present their plays on Saturday, April 3.
Devin Fields of Albuquerque, who is slated for the second group of the Saturday Night Lab, has enjoyed the challenges of creating a production. "It's a new experience because we get to create our own show and find our own successes without someone hovering over you. If we need help, we ask for it," says Fields.
All the student directors agree on the most difficult element of being a director so far: cutting the script. Each director has a 45-minute time limit so Kahin's three-act play, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead," is being carefully trimmed to be sure it still has the impact of the original. "I chose it because of the possibility of a political bent to it," says Kahin. The plot is that of "Hamlet" but rewritten so the main characters of the original are now background characters.
Senn's play, "Copenhagen," is even more difficult to pare down because of the technical aspect of the dialogue. The play is centered on two scientists looking back at the creation of the atom bomb and the moral rights in making it. "I'm no scientist so I have to look up the meaning of all this stuff to make sure I don't cut out anything important," laughs Senn. "It has a lot of metaphors so you can understand the concepts and the actors even if you don't understand quantum physics."
The actors cast were sought by an open call to anyone on campus via posters and word-of-mouth. "It's fun to see who comes out of the woodwork," says Fields. "A lot of people are really good actors and don't know it." According to the directors, they cast people from art, history, computing and other various majors with no relation to theatrical performance.
The Studio Theater, affectionately nicknamed "The Black Box" by those working in it, offers the new directors the opportunity to create their play with the audience on all four sides of the actors. "It looks more natural to have actors talking to each other than it is to have them talking to the audience," says Senn. Kahin explains that she wants the audience to feel involved in the action and make people feel like they are within the play and not just watching it. Fields acknowledges the difficulties but "you learn tricks like turning three-quarters of the way so you're not showing your full back to the audience at times."
The performances are free and open to the public. For more information, contact Shirlene Peters at 575-562-2711.