Witness’ semester ends strong with winter show

Last weekend, Witness Theater, the only entirely-student-written and produced theater group on campus, showcased six original plays at the Arellano Theater in Levering Hall.

Despite Saturday night’s meager showing of only two dozen or so audience members, the student-run plays were just a small preview of the impressive writing and dramatic talent the Johns Hopkins theater community has to offer.

The showcase opened with a play entitled “Variations on Prostitution” written and directed by Jeremy Bremer. The play began with three separate characters, Diana, Mr. Rutherford and Caroline as they sat on stage reading Simone de Beauvoir’s treatise on feminism, The Second Sex. The play that unfolded shed light on the particular irony of this decision.

In the center was Diana, played by junior Emily Sucher, an intellectual prostitute who boasts about her sexual liberation through passionless sex between cigarette drags.

She spoke to the maid, played by junior Eliza Vasconcellos, who entered her hotel room to clean, about her sexual exploits, though the maid seemed entirely skeptical of the supposed freedom the prostitute claimed to feel.

Particularly effective were the fast-paced interactions between the two. When the prostitute replies to the maid’s thank you by saying “the pleasure is all mine,” the maid retorted, “for once,” to which the prostitute says, “No, it’s always mine. I own the deed.”

More of this fast-paced dialogue would have been appreciated in contrast to the long, drawn-out monological nature of the prostitute’s speaking parts, which tended toward the ridiculous: “I work when I want. I don’t like it, but it’s better than being the one cleaning up after the prostitute. That puts you below me on the scale of nipples to condom.”

The maid was adept at drawing out information from each character, though it seemed as though they were all too willing to share. The maid’s interaction with Mr. Rutherford, played by freshman Charlie McGeorge, who spoke of his private meetings with his wife, was not especially moving. Mr. Rutherford, a plain character bound to the bizarre requests of his wife, was a tad uninspiring, though it’s unclear if that is what the production intended.

The final conversation, the maid’s interaction with Caroline, a pot-smoking artist played by Arts & Entertainment editor Phyllis Zhu, senior, evoked the dry humor it needed, though at times the dramatic pauses seemed awkward.

The tongue-in-cheek writing afforded a great amount of absurdity on the actors’ parts, and though each actor filled their roles well, it might have served them better to either be more over-the-top caricatures or more round characters as opposed to straddling somewhere the middle ground.

The following play was a short monologue entitled “Little Red Riding Dirty” written by junior Luke Mayhew. The spotlight shined on Katie Gilbert playing Masha, Little Red Riding Hood, who spoke of the alternative,  “authentic” Little Red Riding Hood fairytale.

Mayhew’s Little Red refutes the notion that she was a naïve girl duped by the wolf who killed her grandmother: “How the hell would I confuse her for a big bad piss-eyed wolf?”

This wry humor instantly becomes ridiculous as Little Red Riding Hood proceeded to discuss in painstaking detail the sexual acts she engaged in with the wolf, “all animal and primal, dog breath and slobber.” Red’s words certainly inspired laughter in the audience, as it was a hilarious new perspective on the fairytale. The acting was assertive and perhaps a little ridiculous — exactly what the monologue called for.

The next play, written and directed by Your Weekend Editor Kelsey R. Miller, junior, entitled “Max,” was a foray into the act of writing centering around two main characters, Fiona and Max, who wait tables at a restaurant. The first scene opened with Fiona, played by Jen Diamond, coming late to work at the restaurant in which she waits tables.

Her manager, Erika Rodriguez, is disappointed in Fiona’s work and asks her to list what the customers want, to which Fiona responded, “What do they want. Write it down. Make it up. Bring it out.” Fiona, a nervous girl, invited her friend Max, played by Matt Pulaski, to help her out at the job.

The two of them spoke ambiguously of Fiona’s problems; her inability to do the job, as strange characters come in and out of the restaurant. Both Pulaski and Diamond were impeccable actors, feeding off each other’s nervous energy.

The tension between the two culminates throughout various scenes and then just as quickly simmers until the final scene in which Max accuses Fiona of compromising herself and threatens to leave.

Fiona frantically beseeches him to stay, saying, “Don’t do this. I’m losing control, Max. Please don’t do this in front of everybody. I’ll be humiliated.”

The explicit reference to the audience was one of the final clues that allowed viewers to realize that Max and Fiona were not really talking about waiting tables, but about the act of writing.

The cryptic nature of the dialogue, though placed in the setting of a restaurant, was meant to hash out the inner turmoil of Fiona, the writer. The final lines, spoken by the manager to Fiona, were absolutely devastating: “It’s over . . . and now you’re all alone.”

In general, the caliber of acting was impeccable for all the characters, though Pulaski and Diamond no doubt stole the show with their immense individual stage presence. Miller’s spectacular writing shone through in their characters and managed to achieve profundity without being inaccessible.

What followed was a play written and directed by senior Douglas Ross entitled “Unconscious Girl Variations” based on the David Mamet play “Duck Variations.” The play had two characters, Jacob and Adam, played by senior Jeremy Bremer and Alex Pressman respectively, dressed in togas speaking about . . . well, everything.

The play was divided into sections; variations, with different topics of discussion marked by the return of both characters to their initial seated positions. Jacob and Adam mused on a range of topics in the midst of insults and pithy lines, like “The Romans . . . I get envious of them. All that marble. The heroism. Can’t say I know how aqueducts work, but, they impress me . . . the whole thing dies when I imagine them taking shits, though.”

The general point of the play seemed up for debate, though it seemed that having a clue as to what “Duck Variations” was about may have clarified some things.

Both Bremer and Pressman’s acting abilities were impressive, inspiring many laughs from the audience. There were certainly lulls, however, that perhaps a bit more polishing might have solved.

“The Metaphor Man,” written by and starring sophomore Benjamin H. Zucker was a humorous interpretation of what the realization of being God might be like. The play opened with Zucker, an anonymous poet, in a bathrobe attempting to write the perfect metaphor for life, surrounded by the crumpled pieces of his already failed attempts.