This weekend, Witness Theater surprised audiences with its second spring showcase consisting of three short plays and a full length. The show started with two darker plays, Dolls by Paige Zeller, and Containment by Alex Hood, and finished with two romantic comedies, Midnight Roses by Roi Meirom, and Loss for Words, the full-length tour de force by graduate student Adam Ruben. Witness, a group that has dramatically increased its membership through wearing funny costumes at SAC fairs, has maintained a two-showcase-per-semester quota for a number of years, and if it continues at the quality of this showcase, then Hopkins has found itself a theater group to be proud of.
Dolls, directed by Jibbs Merkel, conveys a philosophical approach to the relationship between mothers and daughters and the meaning of life. Three actresses playing a rag doll, a wind-up doll, and a marionette were physically placed on stage by the stagehand (Aditya Madhusudan), so that they could give their monologues. The Marionette, a frustrated mother with a slightly unappreciative daughter and husband, was played perfectly by Sara Marten. "The difficulty of this play was that it was a set of monologues, so all of the creative impetus has to come from one of the two people working on it. Also with a monologue the person is talking to air, so its already a little weird," said Merkel. Through the monologues ran the undercurrent that life and the people or places or obligations surrounding a person are not nearly as important as people think. While I enjoyed the philosophy presented, I sensed that the audience wasn't as receptive to the play's heavy content, and was unwilling to accept the idea that something like death could be considered unimportant.
Stephen Sandford directed Containment, a thrilling look at a sting operation in Russia. When it becomes clear that the Russians do not realize that they're there, Bradshaw, played most believably by Tarik Najeddine, decides to change the plans, and leave their assassin to run away without fire support from them as they wait above watching. Clarington, a British soldier, tries to help the soldier himself, but Bradshaw will not allow it.
This play was excellent because it managed to paint an action scene, the kind you would expect in a movie, for the audience without excess dialogue or backdrops. "We were absolutely psyched that we got actual dramas in the play submissions for this showcase," said Katie Gradowski, the Workshop Coordinator for Witness Theater. Fortunately for the audience, though it seemed liked the playwright was trying to subtly say something about Iraq, there was no blatant anti-war message. The scene where Clarington punches Bradshaw could have used more of a reaction, but overall this short was an excellent war play.
Midnight Roses, directed by Tarik Najeddine was a hilarious play about Valentine's day, roses, and being cheap. Lyle, played by Tim Rhue II, is trying to get as many specially priced roses as possible with what little money he has, so his "Bam!" plan is to wait until midnight so that they are regularly priced and then drive across town to the next time zone where his girlfriend lives, where it is still Valentine's day.
At one point a couple, played by Dave Haldane and Lisa Nagy, come to buy a rose and they proceed to kiss wildly for a long time. In the end, Harry the shopkeeper, played by Jassim Faruki, gives the rest of the roses to Lyle for $6. The play runs like a Flying Circus sketch, fast paced and wonderfully ridiculous. Faruki went into the audience and sold the roses during intermission.
Directed by Marina Koestler, Loss of Words is a play about critiquing plays. It follows the social awakening of Marcus, played by Chris Hamel, after five years of lamenting the breakup between him and his ex-wife, Ellie. Marcus is a writing seminars graduate who teaches an intro to playwriting workshop, and throughout the play we see the plays from the workshop acted out for us as Marcus is grading them and the class is critiquing them. Marcus starts assigning special assignments to his most talented student, Amelia, (Justine Olin), to help him out with his social interactions with a Math graduate student (Maura McTague). Amelia mistakenly thinks that the assignments are designed to flirt with her. Marcus so heavily relies on the scripts during his dates, that they get in the way of his conversations.
The story was excellent, the characters were endearing, and the best parts of play were the hilarious scenes of the student stories, especially the ones that ended with one character randomly ending the scene with the words, "I'm Mexican!" The low point of the play came when one of these scenes got a little weird, showing a Ku Klux Klan member with balloons taped on as his balls talking to a handicapped Muslim who feeds him feces. "The point of that scene was to drive Marcus over the edge to the point where he completely loses it and writes something on his own," said Jason Maur, who played Owen, a student who likes to add live monkeys and octopi to the scenes he makes.
"This is the first full-length that Witness has put on in the middle of the semester," said Katie Gradowski. "The fact that we were doing a full length with six weeks of rehearsal in the middle of a semester was kind of stupid and the fact that it came out so well is really amazing. We had an unprecedented number of submissions and they were all really good." Ruben has plans trying to market the play to other theater companies. "When we were picking plays for intersession we had a number of submissions, and Loss for Words wasn't quite finished. It actually was worked on during the Witness workshops during intersession, and so it was cool to see something as great as this play come out of that," said Gradowski. "There were a lot of different scenes at different times and when everyone put together it came out really well," said Jason Maur. And while the idea of putting on another full-length play in future Witness showcases is up for debate, it is clear that Witness' back breaking effort paid off with the last showcase of this year.
