Staging New Plays

HOW MANY of you drool whenever you hear that Marsha Norman or Sam Shepard is having of one of their latest plays experimented with or even staged at the American Repertory Theatre? Unlike Norman and Shepard, student play-wrights at Harvard, in the past, have had few opportunities to see their scripts put on the stage. Well, if you happen to be someone who keeps reams of original works in your desk, or even if you have only written one dramatic opus, you can now submit it for a new project in which undergraduate writers will be able to see other students direct and act in their plays.

The first annual evenings of staged readings will take place in late March at the Loeb Ex. The deadline for plays is quickly approaching, so all closet playwrights had better get their scripts, or even selected scenes of yet unfinished plays, into Susan Wang, secretary of the Harvard Drama Club. Wang says she came up with the idea late last term after realizing that few chances existed for students to get enough financial backing or physical space to have their plays staged. Student actors, directors, and production-oriented thespians will also be able to get into the act. The emphasis on creating a working relationship between writer and actors is designed to help the writers learn how they can improve their styles so that staging their plays will get easier and easier.

Little preparation will go into the atual performances; props will be minimal and actors will have the scripts in hands. People will come in the Loeb Ex and see scenes from the original plays enacted informally on the intimate, yet mostly empty, stage. Thus fat Wang says stie flas gotten more response from non-Harvard students than from actual undergraduates. After postering the Loeb and other places on campus, she says she has received calls from Harvard administrators and even a script from a senior at Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, who won the Young Playwright's Horizon Award and wants to be able to work with it at Harvard. As a result, Wang has asked William Alfred, who teachers a playwrighting course, to encourage his students to submit plays and will contact other students who have already had their plays staged.

After she and ART liaison Jonathon Marks read the scripts, they will decide which scenes from the plays should be focused on. Directors on campus who aren't currently working on any projects will then be asked to work on particular scenes and allowed to choose their actors. The first evening will be dedicated to the undergraduates who submitted scripts and the second night will be for the other burgeoning playwrights.

One such Harvard playwright is senior John Farrell who has been working on his play "Seaview" for the past couple of years. This three-act work includes a trio of separate stories about personal relationships that occur at a seashore. The first act takes place at a cottage house in 1925 in Marshfield, the second at a bunker overlooking the invasion of Normandy in 1944, and the third at North Carolina's Nag's Head Beach in 1979. "The play follows the dramatic evolution of the same character of the same character type." Farrell explains, adding that the same actor will play the protagonist in each act.

Playwrights like Farrell have often felt frustrated about the lack of emphasis on student playwrights at Harvard. This special evening of staged readings will enable students who don't necessarily take Alfred's playwriting course to work on their plays. The project also realizes that the efforts of undergraduate writers who, unless they get a slot at the Loeb Ex. are often forced to keep their plays on paper.