Rice students take to the stage for college productions

Rice students take to the stage for college productions
Trip the Light: Fantastic

BY JAMES SULAK
Special to the Rice News

Brown College senior Melissa King’s introduction to college theater came in the form of signs, posted around campus, advertising auditions. “I never did theater in high school,” she said. But the signs caught her eye, and a mere week into her academic career at Rice University, she landed the role of Eliza Doolittle, the cockney lead in Hanszen College’s fall 2002 production of “My Fair Lady.”

Photos by Tommy LaVergne

Performing in the Hanszen College fall 2004 musical “Three Postcards,” from left, are Hanszen College senior Reynaldo Valdez, Will Rice College sophomore Annabell Bay, Martel College junior Laura Reinsvold and alumna Virginia Dzul-Church ’05. Each residential college at Rice embarks on a theatrical production with students taking on roles from actor to producer, stagehand to stage manager.

“My Fair Lady” was far from the only college show getting off the ground that August, and King was far from the only one trying out. Almost every residential college puts on one show each year, sometimes more, and behind these productions lie stories that are unscripted and improvised. From securing the rights to the script to building the set, every aspect of a production is attacked in less than eight weeks by students who are already busy simply being students. These productions are put on with small budgets and performed in converted college commons to an audience of friends seen daily and strangers never met.

Some colleges produce musicals, others plays. Some of the scripts are student-written, while others are famous. Students at Baker College have pulled together a Shakespeare work every spring — with one exception — since 1970. “BakerShake,” as it is known, has become one of Baker’s proudest traditions, permeating its culture to such an extent that the Bard’s portrait now stands permanent watch over the college commons.

No matter how big or small a show is, making it a reality is an incredibly intense experience, and the first time around, no one really knows what kind of commitment—in both time and emotion—they are making. There are rehearsals almost every weeknight for half a semester, and for many people, scratching out enough time between class, study and sleep can sometimes become the most challenging part of a production.

By the end, no matter how they got involved or what they were expecting, everyone is doing more than they bargained for.

Dramatis personae

Actors spend the first rehearsals reading through the script and getting to know the characters, soon afterwards breaking into groups to work on characterization and scenes.

Finding the core of a character can be one of an actor’s most difficult tasks. “The hardest thing was the full range of emotions,” said Victor Udoewa, former mechanical engineering graduate student who played the lead in BakerShake’s 2004 production of “Othello.”

“Othello goes through the greatest range of emotions, from such highs to such lows,” he said. “I didn’t know if I could do it, so that’s why I decided I should. It was a challenge.”

Some people play a single bit role and move on. Other people, like Cielo Contreras ’04, search out dramatic opportunities immediately after arriving at Rice, throw themselves in and never emerge. “Theater always has been my creative release,” she said. “I was very involved in theater when I was in high school and wanted to continue once I got to Rice.”

From acting to directing, Contreras took on a multitude of theater tasks in her time at Rice, including both producer and stage manager for Jones College’s spring 2004 musical, “Assassins.” Fulfilling more than one set of responsibilities is common—directors produce and act, while actors run from the orchestra pit to the stage and back.

And although college theater is overwhelmingly an undergraduate game, others in the Rice community can and do join in—graduate students, professors, resident associates and alumni alike. In “My Fair Lady,” Paul Stevenson, professor of physics and astronomy, played the part of Colonel Pickering. “He was great to work with,” said King, who played opposite him. “Everyone seemed really comfortable working with him.”

Others, such as William Wilson and James Young, professors of electrical and computer engineering, do valuable technical work behind the scenes.

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Unlike other productions, BakerShake almost always calls in an outside director to take the reins, usually an alumnus. But sometimes a professional arrives to teach his craft, such as Alan David, a Royal Shakespeare Society director who traveled from England to direct 1989’s “As You Like It.” He was forced to return to England before the show closed because of contract obligations, but Joseph ‘Chepe’ Lockett ’93 remembers a thankful cast calling him across the Atlantic: “He was glowing, we were glowing and the bill was immense.”

Lockett, now a Montessori teacher, has been involved in every BakerShake since 1988, including directing the 2003 production of “King Lear.” He’s one of the many alums who, as undergrads, got a first taste with a small acting or technical role and stayed involved either at Baker or other amateur theaters after graduation.

Despite the abundant love these people share for the craft, most do not consider taking it on professionally, instead concentrating on completing their degrees. But there are those who decide otherwise.

Kevin Brown, alumni director of 2004’s “Othello,” received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 2003. When he arrived at Rice, he thought, much like his parents, that “art in general was something wonderful that you did on the side.” However, he remembers exactly where he was when he realized otherwise. “I was walking through the arch in George R. Brown on the way to Hamman Hall, and it struck me,” he said. “I actually wanted to be an actor.” He continued working on his degree, but he admits that it wasn’t his top priority — theater was, consuming more and more of his free time after schoolwork until he was doing little else.

“Many kids are so smart; they’re cheered on by their parents in science and engineering,” Brown said. “Parents want their children to be taken care of and not be starving artists. Living paycheck to paycheck is hard, and they know that.” This, he believes, is one reason people who are so theatrically talented and driven attend Rice rather than a professional theater school.

Brown made the difficult choice to pursue theater as a career, but the fact that most do not follow that path and find other rewarding careers is fine with Lockett. “I’d rather have a school turning out hordes of talented, devoted amateurs who, as adults, will support theater as audience members or independent theater players, than another school devoted to turning out a small number of professionals for an already-crowded profession,” he said.

Technical boundaries

As the clock ticks down to opening, the actors are joined at rehearsals by “techies.” From stagehand to lighting technician, these are the people who make the production tick. And it can be a real challenge. “It’s so difficult for people with no experience to design and build a set,” King said.

The techies saw, hammer and lug set pieces; design props; and hang lights from lifts towering high above the floor. During performances, they dress in black and hide, but without them the show could not go on.

“What seems to be little pieces to the audience, like sound cues, can be immensely difficult and time-consuming to pull together,” Lockett said.

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All that effort should be invisible to the audience, but it leaves the techies feeling unappreciated. Perhaps to get back at those in the limelight, techies often look at actors as case studies of Murphy’s Law: “If an actor can mess it up, he will.”

The most striking fact about college theater is the venue. Strictly speaking, there is no theater, only a college commons with a plywood stage to one side. This becomes especially clear during the mandatory breaks for meals — other people’s meals — during set construction, when fellow students step over lumber and tools as they carry food-laden trays to their seats. “I think it’s great that a college can build a stage and create a whole other world in a space that’s used everyday,” Contreras said.

Performing in a commons imposes a lot of limitations, as does the tight time frame and tighter budget. Creativity is thought of as the disavowal of limitations: office workers are urged to “think outside of the box” and children to “draw outside the lines.” But creativity is born of constraints and of working around them.

In “King Lear,” the throne moved about the stage as the play progressed and turned upside down and sideways to serve multiple purposes, not only as an exercise in economy, but “literally showing ‘playing with power,’” Lockett said. “With no fixed stage, there’s lots of room for innovation, which is a boon to directors, as well as to actors.”

Performing in such a small space makes for an intimate experience, and this gives college theater so much of its energy. In Hanszen’s “My Fair Lady,” Freddy, Eliza’s foppish suitor, sits in the audience during the first act. He remains there through intermission, chatting with curious and adoring audience members until his entrance in the second act.

It’s hard to imagine this happening in a professional production where the barrier between the stage and audience is never breached. But college theater is all about crossing these boundaries — commons and theater, audience and stage, student and actor.

Panic

As opening day looms closer, rehearsals can run until 2 a.m., and some crew members can spend up to 12 hours a day in the commons.

But as the people scribbling on problem sets during rehearsal can attest, there also are classes, homework and exams to be tended to. “People are doing plays, but they also are working really hard elsewhere,” Brown said. “As a director, you have to respect that. It’s a balance that you work hard to create.”

During the final weeks, this balance often starts to break down. Some begin to question whether they were initially misled about the time required, and even those who have been through it before start to wonder anew what they’ve gotten themselves into. Everyone is angry and nervous because they’re emotionally

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invested in a production that has taken over their lives, filling all of the hollow spaces between eating, sleeping and class. As emergencies rear up, the possibility of failure becomes simultaneously more terrible and more likely. In “Othello,” Brown — the director — was forced to take over the part of Brabantio mere days before opening, when the previously cast actor didn’t work out. In the course of a few days, he had to memorize all the lines and integrate himself with the cast.

College theater is messy and full of compromises, but all art is born of pain.

Opening night

Cast and crew rush about, converting a place of eating and conversation to a place of theater and art — hauling chairs, dragging tables and taping up black scrim — frantically cramming a complete transfiguration into one chaotic hour. After the chairs are more or less arranged properly, the playbills are photocopied and a cash box is set up; people start to file in.

The house lights go down, and the orchestra strikes up. Depending on the show, there can be as few as three people or as many as 25 in the pit, and invariably, many are members of the Marching Owl Band (MOB).

“They tended to keep everything a little more fun,” said Athena Stacy ’04, a veteran of two productions.
During a pause in the music in “Kiss Me Kate,” MOBsters would throw in a different set of famous bars every night — for instance, from “The Little Mermaid.”

“Opening night is so exciting,” King said. “When you finally act in front of people, you realize it was worth it. It’s so much fun.”

As each minor hurdle clears flawlessly, cues hit successfully and scenes change seamlessly, cast and crew realize for the first time that their play has actually come together. The rush of adrenaline gives way to pride, and frustration, panic and fatigue subside as each member of the cast and crew say to themselves,

“I did this. We did this.” Because look: The audience is attentively fixed on the stage; these people are moved and entertained. This is what it all was for.

And it is a lot of fun. Rice jokes are often worked into scripts, sometimes even poking fun at administration officials. Wiess’s “Hello, Hamlet!,” a homegrown parody of Shakespeare’s tragedy, is the extreme example: a recent version featured an entire song titled “Bye, Bye Gillis.” The show is a Wiess tradition performed at four-year intervals so every student has a chance to participate.

“I find that there is a more ‘kooky’ air to college theater,” Brown said. “These people are not super serious. They don’t have a ton of drive to be in theater, and it’s not what they want to do for the rest of their lives. But they do it anyway, and they enjoy it.”

These shows also demonstrate the strengths of the residential college system and why it is important.

“Theater allows people to come together and work as a team,” Contreras said.

The colleges provide a ready-made source of support, and the shows create a sense of community and pride — there might be student-run theater without colleges, but there would be less, and it would mean less.

“What lasts are the bonds formed between people, the memories of triumphs and mistakes and saved-by-the-skin-of-your-teeth moments,” Lockett said. “You may never play Leontes again, but for those two weeks, you’ve changed him, and for the rest of your life, he changes you.”

Strike

Strike begins even as the last applause echoes off the common’s walls. The overhead lights flicker on, and the cast and crew approach with power drills and hammers to tear down the set.

The boards are heavy, the words light. The production members laugh one last time at inside jokes and grimace again at missed cues, hauling the refuse to a basement throughout the night. By morning, all will be gone — stage lights no longer hanging over dinner and tables no longer crowded together. People will walk freely again, with no need step over a stage while carrying their lunch trays.

But reintegration into normal college life can take time, and musical numbers won’t stop playing inside of their heads for a few weeks. “There is suddenly all this new free time,” Stacy said. “It’s confusing and a little unnerving.”

But while it lasted, it was a wild ride.

“A bunch of people get together and work their rears off,” Lockett said. “They spend sleepless nights designing or building or decorating elaborate sets, memorizing hundreds of lines, preparing two hours’ experience for crowds of people, some of whom they know but many of whom they don’t.

“And then, poof! In one night, it’s gone.”

—James Sulak is a freelance writer.