At the end of every year, the school’s drama teachers take a step back and let students write, direct and perform their own plays.
The Student-Directed Play Festival is an annual event where students submit their own ideas for short plays to direct. Some are approved, allowing directors six weeks to put the show together on their own.
Directing often creates new challenges for the directing students, but it also provides a unique opportunity for them to express their creativity and for actors to rehearse and perform in a more relaxed production process.
“It’s not just telling people where to stand,” junior Ellie Richardson said. “You also have to do costumes and lights and sound cues. Sometimes I’m like, ‘Oh my god, I wonder what I’ve gotten myself into.’”
According to Richardson, Student-Directed has new obstacles this year because there are more shows than in the past, so some actors had to be cast in two different productions. This causes occasional problems when rehearsals overlap, which casts have to work around.
Freshman Samuel Jennings said that because he is double cast in “Roach” and “Tam Lin,” he has to balance leaving one rehearsal early and coming 15 minutes late to the next.
Additionally, there are difficulties inherent in Student-Directed, which was May 16 and 17 this year. Student directors have to maintain a positive dynamic between themselves and the cast while still remaining in control, as any director must. This becomes more difficult when directing one’s own peers, especially friends.
“I’m a senior so it’s not hard to tell the freshmen what to do, but lots of the cast members are my friends. Outside of the play we’re on the same level, but inside the play I’m in charge of them,” co-director and senior Sophia Pekowsky said. “Usually we’re able to kind of transition into that very well, but there have definitely been points where I wanted more out of an actor, but I felt I didn’t want to ruin a relationship outside of a play.”
Richardson, who also directed a play last year, said she avoided casting close friends as she had in the past after finding she was respected less as a leader by people she knew well.
Despite difficulties directors can have, Jennings said the process is calmer than a typical drama production.
“I feel like it’s a lot more casual and laid back, and there’s less shouting,” Jennings said.
Richardson’s play, inspired by the film “The Kids Are All Right,” centers on the problems in a lesbian marriage. She said she wanted a play where a gay couple was the main focus, which she has not seen in any recent drama society productions. Richardson had to omit a mild sexual reference included in her script, although otherwise she had freedom with the play.
Richardson said the play has worked out better than she expected, and she was not sure at first if it would succeed or not.
“I didn’t know all of my castmates when I cast them. I didn’t know what they’d be like,” Richardson said. “I was a little worried about what our dynamic was going to be like as a group, but it turned out really well.”
