Damn the Canon: Yalies take on the word

By Scott Peterman

There is perhaps nothing more terrifying than writing live theater. To know that you will be placing your dearest artistic creation in front of hundreds of people, openly inviting them to tear it to shreds in your presence, can be anathema to any writer. Yet more and more undergraduates are turning away from the established canon of theatrical works and putting up student-created performances. At least four such shows are premiering this semester, ranging from the comic to the tragic, the whimsical to the metaphysical—typical, one might say, of the varied Yale drama scene. Yet each of these plays offers an additional intrigue: a student playwright waiting somewhere in the wings, bracing for that most intense of personal exposures that accompanies opening night.

Cramped space + obsession + cereal = art

Sarah Treem, BR '02, is accustomed to the playwriting process, having been writing since she was 12 years old. Her debut was the award-winning Who Am I Going to Sit with at Lunch?, a play she still reminisces about. "Structurally beautiful, three acts, thematically cyclical, large cast, and it all rhymed. That was a great play!" she exclaimed, and explained—half seriously—that she has struggled to recapture the epic glory of the piece ever since. Though her latest play, Birthmarks, may be lacking in rhyme and glory, Treem attempts to make up for their absence through intense emotion. The play centers on the story of a Leil, a 15-year-old girl who dreams of stardom and suicide; Amis, her absent father who talks to his dead wife's ashes; and Peach, Leil's grandmother, who comes to live with the family after her Alzheimer's causes her to suffer a drug overdose at a nursing home. Treem first came up with idea for the play a few years ago, while her own grandmother was dying from Alzheimer's. The time was especially poignant for her in the light of the hereditary nature of the disease. "The hardest part was watching my father deal with it. It made me think about what parents can actually pass on to their children: love, talent, or just disease?" Treem found an outlet in her writing.

Though Treem has now been writing for nearly a decade, she claims that it doesn't get much easier with experience: "I will invariably write 10, 20, 30 pages of shit before I figure out what I actually want to say and have to start over. But then it just comes." For Birthmarks, "it" came this summer while Treem was working at New Dramatists, a New York playwright development house, and living in a tiny apartment on Amsterdam Avenue."My bedroom was basically a double bed," she explained. "A closet, and a little floor space in front of the door." She would disappear into this haven every night to squat in that little space, eat cereal, and write for hours. In her own words, she was obsessed. "Towards the end of the summer, all my friends would be going out clubbing or dancing after work, and I'd come home to sit on the floor and write. People were beginning to get worried." Any regrets about the process? "Well, my roommate, who slept on the kitchen floor, must have thought I was nuts. And he could never get into the room to get his clothes or anything because I was always right in front of the door."

While she is nostalgic about the process, Treem is quick to point out that there is more to writing that just finding a comfy spot in which to do it. "My best advice," she says, "is get yourself a support system fast. Everyone's going to have an opinion about your work and someone's going to say `I don't get it,' or `It doesn't work.' That's like being hit. But if you have a friend whose criticism you respect and another who knows how you feel and one more who loves you unconditionally, you'll be just fine."

Your friendly neighborhood metaphysicist

In contrast, Timothy Cooper, BK '02, did not begin playwriting until last semester, when he enrolled in a Berkeley College seminar, The Art of Adaptation, taught by playwright Karen Hartman. In class he got the germinal idea for his new work, Anthro-mythology. Subtitled "Three Chronicles of Alternate Times," Anthro-mythology is not a single work but rather a collection of three one-act plays: "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," the tale of a female archaeological student digging off the coast of Greece; "Post," about three college students' nascent crusade for better dining hall food, and how it spirals out of control into a metaphysical protest of existence itself; and "Forward," in which a 19th-century Southern teen attempts to suppress his power to predict future events in order to escape the pettiness and suspicion of his town. Cooper describes all three of the pieces as "taking place in worlds essentially like our own but with something a little bit off or something slightly out of place." All three center around this idea of alternate realities, while "one of the plays is based on misinterpretation of the past, one on interpretation of the present, and one on the future."

An excerpt from "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," was performed as a final project for Cooper's seminar last semester, under the direction of Michael Robinson, PC '03. Unlike Treem, who is starring in her own production, Cooper does not plan to be involved in the actual production. "By the time I finish writing something I usually have nothing more subtle to bring to it, and an outside director is able to see it in a new light," Cooper explained. First, however, comes the inevitable hurdle of logistics: editing the script, finding a theater space, a director, and a cast for his production. Emily Breunig, BK '03, for one, found that conversion from script to stage enriched her work. The play she composed, The Magic (And What Tanya Did With It), goes up this weekend at the Yale Children's Theater after major revisions to her original script. "Everyone told me [the first script] was beyond the reach of theater," Breunig explained. "I had to take out the airplane, for example." After a cast and company of 12 began interpreting her work, Breunig felt her anxiety slip away—along with some artistic control. "Though [the Children's Theater] maintained the integrity of the script, I really had nothing to do with it after a certain point...I was apprehensive when I started, but now I have no worries for [opening night]." Breunig explained.

Justifying the effort

Inspiration and emotion aside, Julia Kots, TC '01, began writing because she didn't like the works available. "There simply weren't enough good parts for women." After a long career in theater, she claims to have realized why: "Women suck!" This brief comment displays Kots' fiery attitude, even more if you can envision it being delivered to a reporter frantically trying to catch up with her as she dashes from Whitney Humanities Center to her Trumbull room during the only 15 minutes of "free" time she has all day. This frenetic attitude spills over into her writing, which she describes as "viciously funny...or at least vicious." Her new play, Wishers, certainly aims to embody just this spirit: it is an "absurdist dramatic comedy" that has strains of Artaud's Theater of Cruelty mixed with a few funny musical numbers. Sound crazy? The play, set in Victorian England, deals with the interwoven stories of an unhappy girl and an unhappy man and what happens when their subconscious wishes are granted by The Man in the Funny Hat. The play is about, in a word, magic."Well, magic on a $1,200 budget," Kots adds. But more importantly, the play looks at what lies behind our innermost desires and terrors. Turning serious, she quotes David Mamet: "Behind every fear hides a wish." And we're into humor again. "Of course, David Mamet sucks," she said. "If I ever see him, I will physically assault him."

This should give you some idea of the personality of Kots' production. She has been working on the play since January, but, because it functions as her senior project, she really waited to write it until "the day before it was due." She adds, "I believe artistic people can only work under rigid deadlines." It is her first full-length play, although she has worked on collaborations before, two of which were performed. She never participated in theater before coming to Yale, and thought she loves the community here, she is quick to point out its failings: "the playwriting teachers are just bad. Donald Marguiles, the guy who won the Pulitzer for that shitty play, was okay, but he didn't help this play at all. They need to help people, be more professional. I mean, student writing is a good idea, but most of the student writing here sucks. People are pretentious. They're not writing, they're masturbating." However, she is also adamant about the need for more experimentation . "There is no reason for a show like A Man For All Seasons to be done in college," she argued. "People have a right to try new things. They have the right to do stuff that sucks."

Graphic by Marisa Bass. Photos by Livia Demarchias, Josh Drimmer, and Herald staff.

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