The Division of Theatre in SMU’s Meadows School of Arts presented the 16th annual New Visions, New Voices festival this past weekend.
Two senior playwrights scripts were selected to be showcased. The first play “PRETTY, SMART, POETIC,” written by Brigham Mosley and directed by Brandon Sterrett, portrayed three sisters who were raised by their dad to fit into an identity consumed either with smarts, poetry and emotion, or sexuality.
The play follows the struggles of the sisters wrestling with their identity after their dad dies and how they discover he brainwashed them into becoming products of his creation.
The second play “Viriol,” written by Regina Bonifasi and directed by Angelina Fiorini, is as producer Dr. Gretchen Smith puts it, “about a 20-something woman who tries to commit suicide because she is beautiful and wants to die before that beauty fades. She wakes up instead in an asylum, and finds herself involved with four other patients who need her and make her want to live… so then she has to choose to live a meaningful life, which again is not the easy choice.”
Each play involves unusual plots designed to give the audience an experience. Dr. Smith who produces the plays (and has been producing NVNV for 15 years now) comments that, “The most difficult part is always choosing the plays…the playwrights do phenomenal work. Their stories, their imagination, blow me away every year.”
Writing, producing, creating and editing the process involves everyone involved in the play at some point. The playwriting process begins in August and is continually worked on and revamped up until production in April.
Brigham Mosley commented, “One of the most challenging aspects is having to wear all the hats. I also designed the show and all of our cast and crew built it. Making projections, getting everything together – once the production started happening the re-writing took a backseat so we could make a good production – it’s difficult to have your fingers in all the pots.”
There is no doubt that things can get very tied up, especially around the time of production.
As an actor in “PRETTY, SMART, POETIC” Nat French mentioned they rehearsed every night from 6 to 10 p.m. for six weeks. Although having very different themes, both plays in the festival leave the audience with a sense of an experience – which was what the playwrights were aiming for.
Mosley noted, “I want people to leave with an experience – to have shared something together as a community. I love the idea of theatre as event. I don’t know what I want people to think about the show though, I hope they were just affected in some way.”
Dr. Smith adds that these festivals have an especially large affect on the younger crowd because the ideas in the plays “are ideas everyone grapples with-but certainly anyone in there 20s.
Noting the much talked about racy plot line, deep conversations about the techniques used, and squeals and giggles while leaving the theater’s opening night performance, it seemed as though the majority of people in some way had indeed been affected.
