New Voices to spotlight student playwrights
Laura Smit Emerald
Mitra Anoushiravani (left) and Windy Borman star in ‘Speaking Through the Flowers,’
part of the showcase ‘New Voices,’ which will start tonight in the Arena Theatre.
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■Two student plays will be
featured this weekend in an
Arena Theatre production
By Mason West
Oregon Daily Emerald
People listening for some new
voices need not go any farther than
the Arena Theatre. The showcase
“New Voices” opens Friday night.
The two student-written one-act
plays make up the performance. The
scripts won last year’s annual short
play contest held by the University.
The short play contest is open to
all students at the University who
wish to enter. Scripts must be no
longer than an hour in production
and must require minimal design
and tech work to produce.
“Speaking Through the Flowers,”
was written by Jenni Hellesto, who
graduated last year with a degree in
theater arts. This is actually not the
first time her script has been staged;
she directed it last year in the Pocket
Playhouse. But directors Elizabeth
Helman and Eric Lewis, both gradu
ate students, have taken Hellesto's
show further than was possible in
the Pocket Playhouse because of the
increased budget and flexibility
with the space.
“Our production is very different
from hers,” Helman said.
The one-act is set on the wedding
night of a young couple who have
gotten married after knowing each
other for only a week. When the show
was produced in the Pocket Play
house, there were the two speaking
actors and also two people who rep
resented shadows of the characters.
These shadows would engage in a
kind of dance/pantomime during im
portant parts in the script.
Helman and Lewis have extended
the idea of shadows and added one
more for each character, creating a
cast of six. Also, the directors have di
vided the script so the shadows actu
ally take over the dialogue of the two
main characters at times.
“The shadows represent all the
pieces in us that make up our past,”
Helman said.
Lewis explained that when the
show was cast, the script was not
yet divied up among the six actors.
The exchange of lines developed as
the directors began to understand
the strengths of the actors.
“It was a very organic process, the
way the actors came to their parts,”
Lewis said.
An organic process was also used
in the other one-act, “Ewen,” but in
a different way. Unlike Hellesto, the
playwright of “Ewen,” Rowan Mor
rison, is still a student here and was
able to work with the director, grad
uate student Rich Brown,during
production.
Brown said that this has allowed
him some freedom with the script,
which has actually been changed in
the process based on decisions made
between him and Morrison. In this
way, the script has been almost cus
tom tailored to showcase the actors’
interpretation of their roles.
“For both of us, it’s been our first
opportunity to work with the direc
tor and playwright during the
process,” Brown said. “But, we’ve
been very careful to give an accurate
portrayal of Rowan’s work.”
This one-act production revolves
around a psychiatrist and one of his
patients. The patient possesses some
mystic ability and ends up switching
the roles of who is helping and who is
being helped. Brown said that in the
end, it deals with the danger of peo
ple handing out answers to complex
problems in neat little boxes.
Like “Speaking Through the
Flowers,” “Ewen” externally repre
sents the inside of the characters,
but instead of using shadows,
“Ewen” uses the set.
“Nothing in the set is complete,
to reflect the inner state of the char
acters,” Brown said.
“New Voices” runs today, Friday
and Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets are
$4 for University students and are
available the EMU ticket office or at
the Arena Theatre in Villard before
the show.
The power of understatement
■The Alder Gallery features
the work of two local artists
who show that less is more
By Mason West
Oregon Daily Emerald
The visual arts abound in Coburg
at the Alder Gallery where two lo
cal artists are showing their new
work. The show features Mike
Pease’s watercolor and colored-pen
cil works and Christine Sundt’s
unique art jewelry.
Pease has been creating this art
since his departure from commer
cial architecture almost 20 years
ago. His work is almost entirely
open landscape scenes, and they are
all made by observing photographs
or by physically observing a natural
scene. He has gained the mosi noto
riety for his colored-pencil draw
ings, not only for their craft, but for
their concepts.
In his colored-pencil works,
Pease only uses the primary colors:
red, yellow and blue. Much like a
computer printer overlaps the three
colors to create others, so does he to
portray his chosen image.
“It’s always interesting to get peo
ple to understand how much they
can do with just primary colors,”
Pease said. “The fewer colors you
have in your pallet, the more likely
you are to look at the object for the
real color.”
Pease teaches workshops in his
three-color technique. He actually
developed the concept while trying
to teach design students how to
think about using color.
“Drawing is first and foremost a
tool for seeing,” Pease said.
His use of the watercolors, which
represent much of his newer work,
is another attempt to teach himself.
Because of the nature of the differ
ent media, he has to learn how to
use them differently. He said pencil
is a very forgiving medium that is
well suited to detail, whereas water
color is the exact opposite.
“You really have to have a con
cept of the whole thing instead of
the details,” Pease said. “I tend to
use the watercolor as a way to help
me understand what the overall
meaning of the image is.”
Often, Pease will recreate a scene
using different media to make sure *
that he gets everything he can out of it.
Sundt, on the other hand, is more
concerned with a different type of „
Turn to Alder Gallery, page 8B
‘KillingTime’ doesn't quite compare
Caleb Carr‘Killing Time’
Random House
★★★☆☆
By Josh Ryneal
Oregon Daily Emerald
Caleb Carr’s first two novels, “The
Angel of Darkness” and “The
Alienist,” were intricately plotted
and suspense-filled detective tales
set in 1920s New York. Carr earned
rave reviews for his excellent char
acters and acute sense of historical
accuracy, as well as for his grisly
and compelling depiction of the
Roaring ’20s.
With “Killing Time,” his latest
novel, Carr looks forward to the
year 2023 where corporations rule
the government, the environment
has been thoroughly decimated
and the Internet is both an infor
mational tool and a pacifier of the
people.
Carr seems less sure in the fu
ture of 2023 than in the gritty,
grimy past of the 1920s. His char
acters are less solid than in his pre
vious efforts. His hero, criminal
profiler Dr. Gideon Wolfe, is a
mere shadow of Dr. Laszlo Krie
zler, the star of his two earlier nov
els. Wolfe is merely a spectator in
the dark and complicated machi
nations that surround him, contin
ually asking “why?” as the reader
struggles along with him to under
stand the labyrinthine plot.
The plot has something to do
with a band of futuristic pirates
who fly around the globe, creating
havoc in the hopes that the popu
lace will rise up and overthrow
their corporate overlords. In the
process, they kidnap Wolfe and
make him an accomplice in their
schemes.
Their reasons for this are never
exactly clear, and their motivations
behind forging historical docu
ments and causing general may
hem aren’t either. But Carr knows
how to pace a good story, and read
ers will keep turning the pages un
til the book is finished.
Carr seemed more at home with
the straight-ahead classic detective
stories of his earlier books; his de
scriptions and characters were grip
ping and real. Here, he falls into the
trap that snares many science-fic
tion authors and struggles to create
a believable alternate reality that is
still grounded in events happening
today.
“Killing Time” is not a bad book.
It’s just simply not the equal of
“The Alienist” or “The Angel of
Darkness.” While readers hung
onto the climax of those two tales,
waiting for the suspenseful conclu
sion, they will be sorely disap
pointed with the time-machine-en
abled resolution of this one.
Perhaps Carr should take a time
machine back to the 1920s, as he
was obviously more at home there.