by Scott Lariviere, Staff Writer
On Thursday, December 2, Professor Morgan Peters’ ENL 269 Creative Writing: Drama class presented staged readings of their ten-minute plays in library room 205.
Student play-writes were tasked with developing a script and then assigning actors to perform the work. They were allowed to ask friends from outside the class to be actors in their work.
Each writer chose actors and a director to perform each piece, but were not allowed to perform in their own play, nor direct it.
Works ranged from a psychologist talking to a patient, to “Crazy Girlfriends Anonymous,” to a troubled widower struggling to have a new relationship and a man dating a vampire.
Before each presentation, the writers would introduce their title, director and actors for their plays. In between each play, the performers from the previous play would set up the stage for the next play.
Throughout the semester, the play-writes do multiple exercises such as 3-minute plays, 3-page plays, and 5-page plays.
Peters looks for flow and structure, so the dialogue is up to the play-writes. He said that editing is more guidance as there are certain elements to a play that just make it work. Peters has been instructing this class for twelve years now.
Students learn the do’s and don’ts of a play and how to bring it to life.
Professor Peters has been instructing the class for twelve years now. Commenting on this semester, he said, “This has actually been one of the less haphazard classes, he said. “We’ve had a lot of interesting meetings.”
He said that he explained to the class the different situations that arise in the projects, such as, “The actors that flake out on them, directors that flake out on them, the things that just don’t seem like they’re coming together,” he said.
Working with the students, Peters’ enjoys working with technique, “I think one of the fun things was showing them techniques of character development; some of the process that we went through with that,” he said.
Junior English major, Amari Dewberry, was an actor in the piece “Crazy Girlfriends Anonymous,” written by Cassie Bolarinho and directed by Jen Pacheco.
Bolarinho assigned all the actors zodiac signs. Dewberry’s character, Brandy, was an Aries and was portrayed as the meanest character.
An Aries herself, she is familiar with the sign and the character traits assigned to it, so she said she expected it to come natural to her.
Dewberry explained how she prepared for the role, “I tried to think of TV characters that are rude and snarky,” she said.
On her biggest challenges, she said, “I definitely think it’s jumping in and out of character because the very first time you have to act its kind of hard to remember how the character is,” she said, “but after going through several readings, you’re really able to get inside your character’s head.”
Dewberry said she enjoyed the class. “It’s a lot of fun,” she said, “I forgot that it was an assignment after the first couple of times because I felt like I was just acting, which was cool.”