A program from the ASU School of Film, Dance and Theatre aims to give student playwrights a live feedback opportunity on their plays.
TheatreLAB is an intimate way for an audience to interact with the artists performing the piece. The program allows students to submit their scripts to a panel, which picks several to perform to a small audience, who can then ask questions and give feedback to the author and performers.
The shows take place in small classrooms, with the stage at the same level as the audience, without props or scenery. The performance is not about the backdrop, said theater professor Pamela Sterling, one of the directors for the program.
“It puts the focus on the words,” she said. “And how much of the relationship can be told with just the words. I think that’s very important because you can’t, as a playwright, depend on scenery and special effects and everything to make your play work.”
The lab itself is set up so the the playwright can ask questions to the audience or simply observe the audience’s reactions.
“Every play is unique to the playwright and to the play,” Sterling said. “Sometimes we’ve done a reading and the playwright says 'I just want to watch the audience,' sometimes they say 'I have some questions that I want the audience to write and fill in.'”
"Legacy," performed on Feb. 12, was written by Madison Cortez, a theater graduate student. The play was her fifth draft for a story featuring two teenage characters and their lives after abuse.
"I decided that that’s the play I wanted to work on last semester,” Cortez said. “The first drafts were mostly monologues from these two characters explaining things and based on feedback that I got, I made subsequent rewrites and it went through changes.”
The play works to engage audiences with the tough reality of what living in abuse is like, she said.
Sterling said she took on directing the play because it touched on themes she felt passionate about.
“I do think that this particular play could have an opportunity to have a really deep discussion after the presentation about some of the issues and not all plays do,” Sterling said.
The panel that led the conversation with the audience after the show was made up of two actors from the play, a professor and the playwright. They asked and answered questions aimed at improving the content of the play. Eventually, the conversation moved to the themes discussed during the performance.
“Everybody (in the audience) stayed,” Professor Sterling said. “And that’s not always the case. Sometimes people will leave, but they wanted to hear what other people said and offer their own thoughts, and that’s really exciting.”
Audience members spoke out about whether the play was realistic and sensitive to abuse victims, and ultimately worked to fuel ideas about the future direction of the unfinished play.
Julian Paras, who has been involved with theater throughout his life, was an audience member in the "Legacy" show.
“I think it’s a good way of being able to learn from an audience, what they liked and what they disliked,” Paras said.
The proceeds from the play go back to the theater program’s scholarship fund for the program’s students.
Those interested in becoming audience members for TheatreLAB can see the next event at 7:30 p.m. on April 2. The cost to attend is $5.
Reach the reporter at jaande31@asu.eduor follow @jackieanders327 on Twitter.
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