Fall Chamber Readings

Writing for effect

UI Chamber Readings series puts artistic swing on storytelling

Story time is here — adult style — and three University of Idaho playwrights are vying to show just how powerful spoken word can be.

“There is nothing like watching someone laugh, cry, or be provoked by something you’ve written,” said Master of Fine Arts student Steven Robert King.

King is one of three playwrights presenting their work at the UI Department of Theatre Arts’ Fall Chamber Readings series. Student playwrights have been workshopping and revising their best scripts for the past year to present them to the public 7:30 p.m. Sept. 5-8 and 2 p.m. Sept. 8-9 in the Kiva Theater on campus across from the UI Swim Center. General admission is $2 at the door. Tickets are free for UI students.

King’s play, Stay, centers around 17-year-old Abigail Spencer, whose faith in the LDS church is tested when her father receives a revelation concerning the identity of her future husband. Not only is she to marry someone she hardly knows, but — turns out — he is a homosexual.

King said he started writing the script after being prompted to write something he felt “called to write.”

“I decided to dive into my LDS heritage and see if I could find that play,” he said.    

Each play presented in the series was selected from Associate Professor Rob Caisley’s Master of Fine Arts Writer’s Workshop, a class that takes students and distance-learning students through three drafts of a newly written script. In a year, Caisley said each play has been workshopped and heard out loud by audiences several times. Plays closest to completion in the writing process are selected for the Chamber Readings series.

M.F.A. student J.C. Svec has been directing theater for 30 years, regionally in New Jersey and Off-Off-Broadway in New York — but he said nothing is more satisfying than controlling his own story.

“As a playwright, I love the idea of telling a story — any story — from a distinct point of view,” he said.

Svec’s script, ’72, follows Jimmy, who finds himself frozen in time after George McGovern’s loss in the 1972 election and the death of his sister in the Vietnam War. Only after forty years and a trip to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., does Jimmy finally find closure with the death of his sister, the loss of his best friend Bernadette and the missed opportunities with Carol, the love of his life.

Each reading will be followed by a question and answer period, and a chance for audience members to be part of the discussion of what worked and what didn’t.

Hearing his play aloud, Svec said, helps listeners pick out problems, even obvious ones, that may have been overlooked.

“Of all my works, ’72 has probably gone through the most dramatic changes and revisions than any of my other pieces,” he said. “I almost feel every change is an unexpected one, because one always hopes that ‘I got it right the first time,’ — which, of course, is a totally unrealistic idea.”

Plays are directed and read onstage by theatre students. Graduate student Emily Nye is directing Creeps by M.F.A. student Sandra Hosking — and this is not her first time on the job.

Nye started directing as an undergrad at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkansas . She has directed works that have brought her to regional competitions in the U.S. and Off-Off-Broadway theatre in Greenwich Village in New York.

Being back in a university setting to pursue her M.F.A. is a good place to be, Nye said.

“It feels good to be directing and learning again,” she said.

Hosking has been working on her play since 2008. Her script tells the story of freelance Web designer Sarah, who has recently called it quits with her first boyfriend, Peter. A computer geek by nature, Sarah seeks to escape her mundane life and moves in with Eve, a genetic scientist very in-touch with her sensuality. Sarah soon falls for Drew, Eve’s casual boyfriend. The move pins the women against each other and ultimately unites them in a quest to evolve — hopefully — into better versions of themselves.

This isn’t the first time this play has been part of a staged reading, Hosking said.

“It is such a rush to watch my characters come to life onstage,” she said.

The complete schedule is as follows:

Stay by Steven Robert King
7:30 p.m. Sept. 5
2 p.m. Sept. 8

’72 by J.C. Svec
7:30 p.m. Sept. 6
7:30 p.m. Sept. 8

Creeps by Sandra Hosking
7:30 p.m. Sept. 7
2 p.m. Sept. 9