<h6 style="text-align: center"> <a href="http://4thwalldramaturgy.byu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/20171102_193817_Burst01.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-6305 aligncenter" src="http://4thwalldramaturgy.byu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/20171102_193817_Burst01-206x300.jpg" alt="" width="206" height="300" /></a>Mikah Hansen practicing the play
Mikah Hansen practicing the play,
Happy Holidays by Chelsea Mortenson
The upcoming Microburst Theatre Festival features six plays written by BYU students and directed by George Nelson. To bring new plays to the stage takes a lot of editing, revision, and workshopping over months to maybe years. For Microburst, these playwrights get to have life breathed into their plays thanks to the four actors of Microburst; Clara Richardson, Jacob Khalil, Mikah Hansen, and Ren Cottam.
Clara Richardson and Mikah Hansen, both BFA acting majors at BYU, shared their thoughts of being actors in Microburst. “The best part of working with new plays is the freshness of the material! They're not stories I've heard over and over before or performed in multiple times.” Hansen said as she discussed debuting these new plays for audiences. Richardson agreed, “ I have been learning a lot about how to create a character for the first time as an actor. None of the characters in these scripts have ever been portrayed on stage and we only have ten minutes to create a character the audience can relate to”.
Jacob Khali, Clara Richardson, and Ren Cottam
practicing the play Untapped by Rylee Witbeck
Besides the fact that these are new plays, the actors also have to perform as multiple characters throughout the show. “ It is a smaller cast which is fun and each of us are playing anywhere from 2-4 characters,” Richardson explained, “…we need to make each of them very different so we aren't just playing the same character every time.” Hansen also added to the difficulty of portraying more than one character, “Microburst is different than other productions I've been in because it involves so many different stories. Normally, you're only performing one show as one character, but Microburst requires actors to play multiple parts in multiple shows--sometimes back to back.”
Performances will be held at the Nelke Experimental Theater at the Harris Fine Arts Center onNovember 2 through December 2 at 7:30, with a matinee on December 2 at 2:00. Tickets are available at the box office.
by Holly Mancuso, dramaturg After a successful run, Microburst Theatre Festival has wrapped up for this year. If you missed it, make sure you join us next year for a fresh round of new plays written by students. As part of the show we created boards for the lobby highlighting each of the shows. Different drafts showed how much these plays have changed since the first drafts, which was fun for audiences to see. [caption id="attachment_3667" align="aligncenter" width="3264"] The Microburst lobby display[/caption] As part of this process, the production team has grappled with the question: "Why new plays?" This is a fair concern, since many people don't feel comfortable seeing something with which they aren't familiar. It's also easier to be drawn in by a known name
Playwright Philip King knew how to get the laughs. Much of the humor in See How They Run is the contrast of American and English cultures. America's entrance into WWII and subsequent support of the United Kingdom led to many American troops stationed in England. Those troops brought their American culture and customs. Consequently, 1940s Britain was suddenly learning a lot about our culture; some of it they liked and some of it they didn't but Philip King's ability to find the humor in American/England cultural differences contributed to See How They Run's success. BBC America: 10 American Habits Brits Will Never Understand See How They Run's current version was purposefully revised for an American audience. In fact, the play has gone through more than one big change. The original script was a one act farce titled Moon Madness produced at Peterborough Reperatory in 1942. A few years later it went to Comedy Theatre on London's West End and it was there that King added a second act and renamed it See How They Run. [caption id="" align="alignright" width="343"] See How They Run first appeared in London during Hitler's second Blitz of Southern England news1.ghananation.com/international[/caption] Opening night on the West End was an exciting event. Rumor has it that during the show, three bombs dropped on London but even Hitler's Blitz could not stop the laughs. The show continued without a pause but George Gee, the actor playing Clive, later complained that all three bombs dropped during his funniest lines. See How They Run was so successful it continued for 600 more performances. In 1949, the show was once again revised and re-staged, this time in America. King changed Clive and Penelope to American characters to appeal to the local audience. Also, with the end of the Second World War and the rise of the Cold War, the original Nazi intruder was changed to a Russian spy. This is the version we present to you this year.
