Lab
Theatre:
outlet for
amateurs
A series of plays are offering students,
who might not otherwise have the chance,
a try at acting and directing. The plays are
Deing directed by students from Jean
Cutler’s Play Direction class, and the
casts include both experienced and
inexperienced actors.
The project, referred to as the lab
theatre, provides an ideal opportunity for
newcomers who want to break into the
Story and Photos
By PAMELA FITZSIMMONS
theater. Each of the 23 students in Cutler’s
class is directing a play; ten plays have
already been cast. Auditions for 13 other
plays will be held May 3,4 and 5.
“It is conceivable that people may get
substantial roles who have not had any
experience . . . you try to get the best
company you can," Cutler said. Often the
students acting in plays are not even
theatre art students.
A student should not feel discouraged
from trying out just because he is not a
drama major. For as Cutler described it,
the theatre is “sort of like a little world, so
many things make up the theatre, and
there are so many things and people one
has to be concerned with.”
Cutler also described what most
students could expect to get out of acting.
“An actor will learn something about
himself, how to communicate with himself
and others. In particular he will share with
other people things he has thought and felt.
He will also learn the value of intuition.”
An actor has much to think about:
emotion, movement, how he relates to
space and objects, and how he relates to
the audience. “Acting involves the whole
nervous system,” Cutler added.
His student directors also have much to
think about. “We give them as many
problems to solve without completely
discouraging them,” Cutler explained.
Each director has three responsibilities:
1) he must direct a play, 2) he must assist
another director, and 3) he must be
responsible for another aspect of play
production such as stage manager or
makeup The director must pay for all
royalties, if there are any, and for cleaning
costumes if he uses those from the
costume shop.
According to Cutler, the most important
decision for the director is choosing the
play. “He must think in terms of producing
it and consider the nature of his audience.
He should have a strong personal com
mitment,” Cutler said.
Garthelia Williams is one of the student
directors. She has been directing Soul
Gone Home by Langston Hughes. “I
wanted to do a Black play, and it had to be
a one-act, so I decided on that one,”
Williams said. She described Hughes’ play
as the “Life of a poor mother and son, each
with their distinct personalities showing,
and each beginning to realize the other’s
needs and wants.”
As a director, W'lliams sees her role as
helping or hindering the actor. “Hie actor
is the artist, and the director is more of an
instructor,” she added.
Williams, a junior in theater arts, was
attracted to acting because of its glamour
and later found it took a lot of work and
discipline. “But you can come out feeling
really good about it,” she said. She would
like to become an artist “like Cicely
Tyson ” “All my life I have been secure,
but acting is a high risk business; you
don’t get a secure living,” she added.
The plays being presented in the lab
theatre have a lot of promise, Williams
believes. But the auditions were not good.
“The turnout was low; people were afraid
Suzanne Stassevitch as “She” and Paul Meir as “He” rehearse for
The Artist, a farce on the roles people play, opening May 1 in the
Pocket Playhouse.
to try out,” she explained. As a result, she
had a difficult time finding a male lead.
Larry Sutton, however, was “totally
pleased” with the tryouts: “I cast three
people that I really liked.”
Sutton is directing a fable, Love in a
French Kitchen The play involves a
triangle: husband, wife and mother-in
law. The husband is henpecked, but in a
brief span of time reverses the whole
situation
Sutton has a degree in literature but has
been taking theatre courses for the past
year He has not directed very much and
finds the lab theatre a good way to get
experience. He has also found it to be
somewhat artificial. “It is a class, and the
Pam Labbe and Ron Bills attempt to extricate LuraLee Landis from an embarassing position in Love
in a French Kitchen.
class requirement colors a bit the reason
we are doing a play,” he explained. “It is
difficult to think of it as a class and to keep
the play in perspective as a class project.
It is very time-consuming,” he added.
Sutton estimated he would spend 35 hours
on line and working rehearsals, and this
does not include special rehearsals. He
will earn three hours of credit.
He loves the theatre, particularly the
immediacy of it, the constant present
tense. He has learned to live with
vulnerability. “Performing on stage is one
of the most vulnerable things. You are
open to criticism and anything that wants
to come along . . . it is extremely exciting,”
he said.
The members of Sutton’s cast vary in
their previous theatrical experience.
Pam Labbe. who plays the role of the
mother-in-law, has been taking acting
classes at LCC. She said acting allows her
to express herself much the same as any
other art. She has been in a couple of other
UT productions before.
LuraLee Landis, who plays the
daughter, is also an experienced per
former. She said acting was “The most
fulfilling thing I can do for a hobby or
career type of thing.” She is currently an
English major, but will probably end up in
drama and evenutally go into it as a
profession.
Unlike Labbe or Landis, Ron Bills is a
newcomer to the theatre department.
Thinking, “with all those parts, we should
get somethin
g," Bills and a friend built up enough
courage to go to the tryouts. They both got
a part. Bills, a freshman in interior ar
chitecture, thought the one-act plays in the
lab theatre were “an easy way to get
acting experience, without getting into
something over your head.”
One of the student directors, Diane
Solomon, started her acting career in the
lab theatre and will be auditioning for the
Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts next
year.
(Continued on Page 14)
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