Marilyn Mejia
Staff Writer
The theater department hosted student-directed one-acts as part of an Introduction to Theatrical Directing class at the University of La Verne. The projects took hours of preparation, and were finally performed starting Wednesday.
The one-acts are directed by eight different student directors who each chose what piece they would like to work with.
The final projects included scenes from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Neil Simon’s “The Defenseless Creature.”
The introductory class was taught by Sean Dillon, assistant professor of theater arts.
All the students were required to put on a 12-minute to 15-minute show that demonstrated movement across the stage.
This was intentional to give the student directors more options of staging techniques to work with.
The young directors are in charge of everything from casting to stage lighting, all of which they had to do in a span of three to five weeks.
“It’s really aided my creative mind because I’m an actress so usually I’m in charge of me and my being,” Jennifer Scarr, senior theater major, said.
One of the student directors, sophomore theater major Travis Snyder-Eaton, is directing a play that unlike the others is almost an hour long.
The act is from “The Zoo Story” by Edward Albee and has a cast that includes sophomore theater major Zachary Green, who is also directing a one- act.
“I had to go through the preproduction phase, directing with creativity, using theater theory, using different concepts of theater and incorporating it all,” Snyder-Eaton said.
Green said that one of the biggest challenges for him was that he had to memorize a 25 minute monologue while directing his own act. He also mentioned that although it was a lot of hard work, it was still fun.
“My favorite part was discovering new things with the actors and collaborating not just evolving alone,” Green said.
This is the only performance this semester that is free and the only performance that will have a variety of different plays and directors involved.
“It is a good opportunity to see what theater has to offer. It has a wide variety of shows that are all engaging,” Green said.
The student-directed one-acts started on Wednesday and will continue until Saturday. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. in the Jane Dibbell Cabaret.
Marilyn Mejia can be reached at marilyn.mejia@laverne.edu.
