Theater Arts students take show on the road

After thousands of rehearsals, hundreds of run-throughs and five live performances in Scotland, six Theater Arts majors performed Sophie Treadwell's 1928 play Machinal for the first time before a University audience in Annenberg's Studio Theater last night. But while all six players are veterans of the University's theater scene, the last nine months had been, in the words of College senior and cast member Melissa Donald, "invigorating, inspiring? and intimidating at times." Not only was Machinal -- which the group studied all spring in Theater Arts 275 and performed for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August -- the first play any of them had studied so intensively, but the first any of them had performed in another country. "[There's a] huge difference between learning how to act in the classroom and acting in a theater in front of your school -- and in front of an audience where no one knows your name, and they have no preconceptions," said cast member and College junior Neil Hellegers. College senior Lara Siegel added she "loved Scotland and everything it had to offer," noting, "I would love to go back for a big chunk of time." And although class has started again and the cast left Edinburgh almost two weeks ago, the actors were enthusiastic about finally showing the play to their peers before performing it the last time Saturday night. The Theater Arts program has sent students to Edinburgh's festival for a University-funded trip called "The Edinburgh Project" for seven years. Out of the 150 groups performing in the Fringe Festival -- which is part of Edinburgh's annual theater festival every August -- Penn's troupe was one out of only five college casts. Planning for Edinburgh begins at the end of fall, when interested theater majors apply for the program. "We choose based on their demonstrated record of responsibility and commitment -- and acting ability, but that goes without saying," said the play's director, Rose Malague -- one of the two faculty members who traveled with the students. In contrast to its numerous performing arts groups, the University has a fairly small amount of theater majors -- approximately 50 -- and most plan to pursue performance after graduation. "[The Edinburgh Project] approximates the time commitment of a long-run performance," explained Malague. "You discover new things --you own the material more. It makes for a richer performance." In the semester that the chosen cast members -- along with six other theater majors -- studied Machinal, they concentrated exclusively on the play. "I loved it from the straightaway," said College senior Raluca Georgescu, who played the story's main character, a trapped woman of the 1920s who kills her husband for freedom. Based on the true story of Ruth Snyder, the first woman sent to the electric chair, Machinal premiered on Broadway months after Snyder's controversial trial concluded. "I was absolutely intrigued that it was based on a true story," said cast member Rebecca Scott, a College junior, who mentioned that in deciding how to perform the play, the class did some "detective work" on the case. Cast member and College junior Marya Kaminski explained how the class used the play as a "vehicle" for exploring other acting theories and techniques, such as cross-gender casting. "[Casting males as females] isn't strange -- with the shortage of males, it's pretty common here," said Kaminski. "But it was a stylistic choice for this," she added, explaining how the cast -- which includes only one male -- was trying to offer alternative portrayals of men to distinguish between the way the main character viewed males. In addition, the ramifications of taking the show to Europe -- and having to set up, perform and remove the set in two hours for the festival -- forced students to experiment with sound and props. Eventually, the class decided on a minimalist set comprised mainly of colorful panels and a frenetic, unsettling soundtrack.