First-Year Show

Author: Jessie Kissinger

This past weekend, sixteen actors rallied together for a highly energetic and physically charged show full of kissing, dancing, chanting, yelling, wheezing, straddling teddy bears and even insect mating. It was all part of "Discover: Scenes of Unearthing," the 13th Annual First-Year Show.

Director Jeanne LaSala strung together a series of seven unlikely scenes with the common thread of discovery, pulling from a number of plays: "Time Flies" by David Ives, "The Naked Eye Planets" by Rebecca Tourino, "In Arabia We'd Be Kings" by Stephen Adly Guirgis, "The Four of Us" by Itamar Moses, "The Hopper Collection" by Mat Smart and "Eurydice" by Sarah Ruhl. In making her selections she explained, "Some of the characters discover the truth; some, deception; some discover love and some discover its absence; some discover their mortality, and some discover the ways in which they can live forever."

The show explored three stages of discovery: creation, expectation and confusion, and realization. Accordingly, the group came together in chorus to explicitly address these issues at the beginning, middle and end of the show.

To illustrate the theme of creation, the show opened with all of the actors lying on the floor covered in sheets, from which they emerged like insects hatching from their shells as the lights went up and the theme song played from"2001: A Space Odyssey."

About midway though the show - after the sweet and unreceived love confession of Charlie (Rex Ovalle '12) during "In Arabia We'd All Be Kings" - the ensemble again charged the stage, chanting, "I want! I can't! You should! I shoulda." This repetition emphasized Charlie's sense of confusion and failed expectations by echoing the slurred last words of the drunkard Sergei (Christopher Grabowski '12): "shoulda, shoulda."

The show concluded with a scene from "Eurydice," in which Orpheus (Peter Coccoma '12) and Eurydice (Sara Woodworth '12) discover love through its confession. Orpheus, afraid that Eurydice might forget that she loves him, tied a string around her ring finger, allowing the love to be fully realized through a marriage proposal. The rest of the ensemble joined the lovers and became the ocean for the two to swim in, symbolizing the fluidity and transition that one experiences as he or she comes to terms with life's many discoveries. Ultimately, the actors linked together their individual narratives by posing as their characters in one connected structure. This emphasized the broad relevance of a concept like discovery, as seen in the first scene where two mayflies (Chantia Harper '12 and Jason Mooty '12) realized their mortality.

The scenes themselves ranged from cartoon-like and pun-filled humor to tender exchanges and relentlessly biting wit. Covering a comprehensive range of human interaction, relationships between characters spanned a spectrum of emotions, including happiness, immature love, friendship and familial devotion.

While there was some intense drama, the performance maintained an upbeat tone, one helped along by cutesy scene transitions, an overall comedic scene selection and a constant sense of motion. Even scenes that could have been stationary engaged the audience by using the full stage. If one character did not move much, it only highlighted another character's actions. In "The Naked Eye Planets," Harris (Sean Maye '11) went into a fit of heaving, while Madeline (Mindy Marquis '11) didn't move from her balcony, a simple block that she stood on. Her lack of movement made Harris' fit more desperate and heightened the absurdity of the scene.

An awareness of character physicality also gave the scenes motion. Most notably was Sughey Ramirez's '10 fully-embodied role of Chickie - a dumb but sweet girl born on the wrong side of the tracks - in "In Arabia We'd Be Kings." She played with her hair, nervously shook her leg and scratched her nose, capturing the character's self-consciousness and naiveté despite vast experience and restlessness.

Set in a variety of environments, the stage was fairly bare, allowing the space to shift from the humble abode of a "lowly mayfly" to an expensive home housing a painting by the artist Edward Hopper. The lighting also played a subtle role in setting the scene, giving each an appropriate hue natural to the setting and only taking on a more dramatic role during the ensemble sections of the show.

All in all, the actors had a lighthearted entrance into the Middlebury theatre scene. In choosing the theme of discovery LaSala gave the show an affectionate tone, adding a level of personal experience to the work. In her director's notes, she explained, "For the sixteen actors in this production and the many others behind the scenes, my belief was that they, too, might discover that hope in themselves through this process."