By Courtney Wicker
Elm Staff Writer
From Nov. 17 through Nov. 19, the stage of Tawes belonged to the cast of “The Mystique.” The production, featuring the seven students from drama professor Timothy Maloney’s rehearsal and performance class, was a compilation of pieces extracted from other works.
Sophomores Amanda Boyer, Mike Liberto and Phaedra Scott, junior Mandy Venable and seniors Tara Bancroft and Katie Muldowney made up the students in Maloney’s class and the cast of the show.
Before “The Mystique” was a play, it was a mere idea in Professor Maloney’s Rehearsal and Performance class. It was entirely composed by the cast and Maloney over the course of their class this semester.
“We were given a theme the first day of class by Professor Tim Maloney that was ‘Women’,” Scott said. The class expanded on that general theme and brought relevant ideas to the drawing board.
According to the class syllabus, the focus was “females in drama: their toils and tribulations, their victories and defeats, and why.”
“This was what TM had given us, and we each took what that meant to us and started to bring in pieces that we thought fit that statement,” Boyer said.
During their classroom sessions the students brainstormed ideas and debated over which pieces would work best in the final play.
The group experienced both ups and downs while working with one and another.
“Trying to collaborate with six other people was at times frustrating, but I was always ready to listen to what the others had to say,” said Boyer.
“It was stressful and kind of nerve-wracking,” Scott said. “When we were getting closer to the show date everyone buckled down and pulled their own weight.”
Liberto found unique challenges in being the only male in the class.
“I’d be lying if I said it was easy being the only man. There were many classes in which I had to stand up for males everywhere and found myself buckling under the combined opinions of six women,” he said. “If anyone not in the class were to have walked in, they may have thought me a sexist and the women all man-haters. But everything we said was tongue-in-cheek, and I hope I didn’t offend any of the girls.”
The canvas for such a play could have featured any number of writers in any number of combinations. The group hunkered down and mulled over which of the various pieces they felt fit the theme best.
“The creation process was the part of the show that I wish people were able to see. There were so many classes in which we discussed one play or one idea and that often carried over into the next class because there were so many different ways a topic could go,” said Liberto.
“We each were required to get 10 minutes worth of script, so after we did that, we all edited what everyone else did and picked what we liked and threw out what we didn’t,” Scott said.
“The Mystique” ended up featuring works from over 15 different writers, including Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Maya Angelou, and Edgar Allen Poe. The cast handpicked everything from the scenes and order in which
they fell to the costumes, which came from their own wardrobes.
It wasn’t all serious work and no play for the students, however. They had their share of funny moments that kept a good balance during the process.
According to Boyer and Scott, the working title of the play was “Make Your Own Damn Sandwich,” and the students’ director gift was a sandwich wallet.
“[Professor Maloney] is very funny. He has moments were he will say something, and we all would just crack up. I think one of my favorites is when we gave him our cast gift (a sandwich wallet), one of the first things he said was, ‘This is remarkable.’ I am sure that doesn’t sound very funny, but given the moment, it was,” Boyer said.
The group’s collaborative efforts proved to be a successful, creative styling of various works.