Elizabeth Scott Caldwell photo by Michael Bailey

This year was hard.  That's what most students would say about the Fall Festival at the University of Virginia Department of Drama.  Not that we're afraid of challenge, or never work hard.  Ha!  The idea, after this fall, seems laughable, as even most of the Faculty would probably agree.  Three plays at once is an enormous demand on the students and resources of the department.  There's the shops, for a start.  Then scenery had to be changed overnight to prepare for an entirely different production.  Then rehearsal space was at a premium, and in some cases technical rehearsal came just days after actors learned their lines.  Thank goodness for Shawn Paul Evans and anyone else who could figure out the calendar.  Life in the Drama Department was running on a vastly different schedule than before.  We all agreed; it was certainly a challenge.

These considerations aside, the plays themselves are...different.  They are new, very new.  For Colored Girls Who have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf and Cloud 9 are from the last thirty years, and Call of the Wild is brand new.  Which...is all right, actually.  It's more than all right, as it seems just about time we, that is, this group of students, tried something so new.  That is the point of writing new plays, of creating new art: there's something still needed, something wanting that existing pieces haven't managed to achieve yet, and so an author tries to sort it out.  Otherwise, why bother?  The professional actor and designers work on new plays all the time, and yet some students have only recently begun to prepare for this.  I know I'd only recently begun thinking about it; I'm still trying to read all of the older works a good Drama student is supposed to have read.  Fortunately, this entire season, or academic year, has focused on socially relevant and provocative works that are in many cases the first chance we've had to address these concerns or encounter these styles.  The Crucible, Inherit the Wind, The Laramie Project—this is socially engaged drama that we've known and learned, and yet its voices are really for generations that came before us.  These works are every bit as relevant today, but they were not written for us.  Playwrights write now with our concerns in mind and the changes we want to see, and this season's plays teach us to master new genres of dramatic literature, re-invent old ones, and feel the thrill of having new writings placed directly in our hands.  We're taught to bring classics to life and to interpret our own materials, and we're using both of these skills to present this season's plays, which include the second semester's Truth and Beauty by Ping Chong, Luminosity by Nick Stafford, and a festival of one-acts by writers Jane Anderson, Maria Irene Fornes, and our very own Walt McGough, a fourth year English and Drama major.  I emphasize, however, that students are interpreting new works and also bringing classics to life.  As new plays are wrtten out of a pressing need, there is a reason older plays are performed; their messages need to be heard again, or the challenges they presented are still unresolved.  This season is not just about doing "new" works that have never been done before.  Indeed, Caryl Churchill and Ntozake Shange's plays are from the 1970s, but these controversial, socially engaged, yet uplifting pieces ( including the choreopoem format and the wonders of Victorian cross-dressing) seemed, according to many audience members at the Fall Festival, just as shocking, moving, and intensely personal now. 

Rather than continuing to speak about the entire Festival, I'd like to talk about my experience on one show in particular. 

What I've said about this Fall Season and the opportunities it has afforded comes from talking with colleagues about their work.  For my part, I, along with fellow students, had the opportunity and the challenge of working with Marianne Kubik on Call of the Wild, an original musical based on Jack London's Call of the Wild and White Fang.  Working on a brand-new piece is exciting; the actors are essentially creating the roles and characters for the first time.  There is no real "original" production to reference; all the previous productions of Call of the Wild had very different scripts and a different composer.  The music had never been heard before—how strange it was to go about with songs stuck in your head that, for all intents and purposes to anyone else, didn't actually exist.  A portion of it didn't even exist for us for a long time—the music for Act II was still incomplete when we went into technical rehearsals, teaching us challenging lessons about the nature of working on brand new pieces! 

Thank goodness for Marianne, who knew what was needed and made sure it was there.  Thank goodness for actors with no fear of playing dogs, wolves, drunken pioneers, or crazed French-Canadian mail carriers.  Thank goodness for the band members, some of whom were found a mere week before the show opened.  Thank goodness for stage managers who didn't mind folding snow blankets, tracking down cups needed for all that whisky, and mopping the stage for actors who'd be on hands and knees, among their other enormous responsibilities.  I loved the show.  I was so proud of it.  There were perfect things, like the staging, with characters climbing all over the broken-down, battered-looking set.  I loved the fights, which I admittedly had nothing to do with.  Certain songs blew me away, and when the river poured out of Thornton's backpack to cover the stage and when the dogs could hear the howls of the wolves closing in, I experienced, I think, the thrill of finding that parts of Call of the Wild filled that certain empty place that hadn't been filled in other plays.  If I ever wondered "what's the point, really," as a lot of people did—"Call of the Wild...the musical?  It sounds like a "Saturday Night Live" skit.  Sorry, I like theatre and everything, but I'll skip this one.  It's stupid"—I'd come back to rehearsal, unsure, and watch Buck fight to protect his friends, or White Fang letting herself be tamed, and I'd find what I liked in it again.  What I really, really liked.  People howled at the moon when I mentioned the show.  I started to as well; it was easier to laugh a little bit. 

But it was not ridiculous.  It was not stupid.  We worked so hard, and we ended up in Alaska with Jack London's sled dogs, wolves, and pioneers, with purpose and a reason to be there, and something important to show for the hard work.  And it was...cool.  SNL would never have had as much fun with it as we did. 

Back to main page...