Students are full of stories—Salve knows that. That’s why Salve Regina’s theater club, Stagefright, in partnership with the Playwriting Guild produced a night of student-written pieces for the stage this weekend.
Twenty three students worked together in order to present twenty short plays that kept the audience entranced over the course of two hours.
Students in the Playwriting Guild acted as both writers and directors for all of the pieces. Working with student’s work, though, was far different from working with classics such as Antigone or The Fantasticks.
“Stagefright is more fun… because we do what we want; we make our own decisions… It was more unique, more flexible,” said Molly Corley, Freshman and Production Manager for the production.
Students would first write script drafts for each of the plays, then workshop them as a group every week in order to get to the finished project audiences saw during the production’s run.
And this writing, in some cases, came straight from the heart.
“What they were writing, a lot of it was deeply personal stuff that they were putting in front of people,” said Corley.
Laura Jedynasty, writer of A Virgin’s Confession, admitted that the play was based on her own personal thoughts and experiences. What she found was that there was a detachment from the monologue as she watched it being acted out.
“It’s a weird feeling… After a while you forget it’s about you. It’s more about them [the actor].”
And maybe that was because rehearsal became a sort of work shopping, too. Actors, writers and directors would each contribute a part of themselves to the characters when polishing their performances.
“It’s more of a collaborative thing,” said Jedynasty, who also acted as Sue in Toe Thumbs Up.
She said that the accent and attitude of her character came from both the writer/director Maria Smith and herself.
Jedynasty expressed that she eventually held her character very dear, becoming inseparable at times. “Sue is my new spirit animal… She is my new inspiration for life. Being Sue was the most fun thing ever! … For most of it… I just had to be like ‘What would Sue do?’”
The plays had the audience laughing, in stunned silence and moved to tears over the duration of the two hour show; all by the power of the Salve student’s pen.
