Sporty one-acts exercise dramatic license
Before 1958, basketball at EMU was played only as an intramural sport organized through literary societies. Today, the old gym is being transformed into a space for theater.
As a way of christening this new space for the Theater Department, Paul Hildebrand is producing a series of one-act plays to be performed Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of this week. All three share the setting of a gym and the theme of sports as a metaphor for life.
The set of three plays begins with "Workout," a monologue performed by Sarah Pharis. The performance portrays the hyper-realistic life of the ultimate over-achiever who seems to have it all together from waking up at the break of dawn to writing, directing, producing, and staring in her own film. Pharis said, "The character is someone with whom we can all identify: what we show to the world as being the ‘main goal’ for our lives is often something bitterly different that what we secretly desire."
"Carrying the Calf" featuring Alison D’Silva, Roxanna Michael, Rebekah Miller, and Katie Resendiz, captures the experience of three women in a beginning martial arts class. "As we get to know these three young women we find that each one has a problem with the men in their lives," said Hildebrand. As the women learn the skills of self defense (choreography assisted by Lunwei Zhang), they also explore issues of abusive fathers, dysfunctional families, and controlling boyfriends.
The director, Michael Shank, spent two years at EMU before transferring to Kent State for a theater major. He returned to EMU this year for the Conflict Transformation Program. "The moves in Aikido and moves in karate teach you how to confront conflict and then move beyond it or deflect it or disperse of it, and since I’m a masters student in the Conflict Transformation Program, it seems like a nice integrated approach to both my interesting in theater and conflict transformation," said Shank.
Shank hopes that the play will open up discussion about the fears that women have concerning men and questions of "how can men work to change that and how can women empower themselves to address that too."
The final play, "Playing Hardball" was directed by Hildebrand, who describes it as "a real guy play" Playing two brothers, Michael Stauffer and Timothy Koehn meet in their old high school gym on Christmas eve to play basketball. "As they play their one on one basketball, they use that as a way to sort of work out their problems together," said Hildebrand.
The concept of this production was based on Hildebrand’s desire to claim the gym space for EMU’s Theater Department. Plans to turn the old gym into a theater were part of the Commons Phase II building project, which is still awaiting funding to commence. "The plan was that it would just sit there in mothballs until such time as this whole space is ready to be gutted and turned into the new theater arts and communications facilities," said Hildebrand. In the mean time, with the Guild theater condemned, the Theater Department had to rely on Lehman auditorium for performances.
"While [Lehman Auditorium] is adequate, the acoustics aren’t great, the seating isn’t ideal, you know ideally we’d have great seating where everyone can see," said Shank.
Although the technical aspects of Lehman Auditorium are not great, an even bigger problem is that the same space is relied on for Music Department events and for chapels. Compared to other universities that have had falling outs between departments over similar issues, Hildebrand thought that EMU shared the space well. However, it was inconvenient. Any set built for mainstage theater productions had to be designed to roll offstage for other events. In order to provide time for set construction during last winter’s production of The World is a Comedy, Hildebrand decided to hold some of the rehearsals in the old gym.
Hildebrand said, "It gave me a taste for what that space could ultimately be like, and I began to think … If we could just sort of beg, borrow, and steal enough to make that place useable as not just a rehearsal room but as an alternative performance space and if we could do some shows here instead of Lehman, wouldn’t that make everybody happy?"
With the support of Physical Plant, money left over from the government grant, and the skills of Phil Grayson, EMU’s technical director, Hildebrand has begun to make this vision a reality. For the first performance, Hildebrand chose plays designed to acknowledge its history as a gym while christening it as a theater.
While the theater department will not abandon Lehman completely, the gym will provide a convenient alternative closer to the department offices. It is already scheduled to host the spring play Comedy of Errors and an event for next year’s homecoming. Hildebrand is also considering using the space for a dinner or brunch theater.
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