By Abby Lass
Managing Editor of Arts
From April 30 through May 2, South Stage presented its first show of the spring season, the annual Student Directing Festival.
This production included two one-act plays, The Nelson Family Thanksgiving, written by seniors Sam Fidler and Yasmin Yacoby and directed by Yacoby, and Park Angel, directed by senior Rebecca Williams.
Nelson focuses on the marital problems of Marshall (played by sophomore Aaron Foster) and Liz (played by sophomore Tema Siegel) that arise while they’re gathered with their extended family to celebrate Thanksgiving. In contrast, Park Angel follows a young man named Josh (played by junior John Aber) as he tries to escape the pain of his reality by sitting in a park and eating copious amounts of graham crackers.
Both shows, though works of fiction, focused heavily on the concepts of truth and reality: the way people cope with the agonizing truths of the world and the lies they tell to justify their actions.
The evening began with Nelson, and I’m going to come right out and say I wish this show had been two acts.
The show was packed with complex themes and promising characters, but because of the time restrictions, both shows remained under fifty minutes each. This amount of time did not allow the cast to fully explore and develop these characters and ideas.
Certain aspects of the show, such as Liz’s turnaround when she realizes why her husband lied to her, felt a bit rushed and awkward. These problems would have been resolved had the show had more time to explore these themes more deeply.
That being said, the acting from the entire cast managed to make this play heartfelt and believable, and brought a warmth and reality to some of the more contrived or cliché plot points.
The humor and energy onstage was impressive and each of the actors gave a very honest, relatable interpretation of his or her character. Junior Liel Dolev was a personal standout, transforming both his voice and physicality (with the help of a spot-on mustache) to brilliantly play a decrepit, but nonetheless wise grandfather.
However, the show was stolen by senior Sierra Weintraub, whose portrayal of ten-year-old Sarah utilized stunning comedic timing and delivery as well as the charmingly blunt honesty and spontaneity of childhood that so many of us have worked so hard to outgrow.
After a quick intermission, the audience was transported into the much less hectic though equally as complicated world of Park Angel. With his parents and well-meaning but overbearing sister (played exquisitely by sophomore Rebecca Sarin) gone, Josh seeks refuge from reality on a park bench with his new friend Lucetta (played by junior Shira Abramovich).
Although the entirety of this play is an existential and nostalgic discussion with relatively simple staging, the informed character choices made by each of the actors had me on the edge of my seat. Every character had a complete set of distinct mannerisms and an individualized style–an impressive accomplishment considering these shows only rehearsed for a month–that made me feel as though each of these characters could be a person I’d meet on the street.
I won’t go into the more surreal aspects of this show, if only for fear of misinterpreting William’s complex thematic choices, but they were handled with loving grace and made for some stunning visuals and symbolism, not to mention excellent post-show debate.
A subtle, yet thought-provoking moment that stuck with me long after the show ended was the juxtaposition of two different schools of thought: Josh’s assertion that our ability to dream is the only thing that makes us different from the dead and his sister’s belief that if we’re just going to do nothing but dream all our lives, we may as well be dead. Even after a lot of thought I can’t say definitively which statement I agree with, but I certainly think it’s a worthwhile debate.
The purpose of South Stage, as described by director of theater Jeff Knoedler, is to give students a chance to experience difficult situations in the safety of the theater. This production, perhaps more so than any other this year, gave students a chance to do just that.
These two shows were perhaps the most lifelike depiction of the real world of any of South Stage’s shows this year. There were no corpses making vacation plans and no flamboyant aliens, only parents trying to save the happiness of their daughter while sacrificing their own, only a sister trying to survive a tremendous heartbreak while still keeping her brother’s psyche in tact.
The struggles these characters went through onstage could happen to any of us. Some of them did not handle their situations in the healthiest way, but it gave us a chance to think, to sit back, and to observe their actions and wonder, “Would I do that if I were there?”
The Nelson Family Thanksgiving and Park Angel brought up a lot of hard questions and didn’t provide many answers. In fact, both shows ended in incredibly ambiguous places. But just like in the real world, these crossroads gave us a chance to choose our own course, and to look back later and decide if we really made the right choice.
