Not every musical or play cast has the opportunity to work with the writer to finalize the script of the show. This special experience is what University Players’ Virginal Works program offers to student actors and writers every year.
The Virginal Works program is open to undergraduate students who are interested in writing their own plays and musicals. When the two pieces are selected, the writers attend the performances in order to make changes to the script and see how their creativity works onstage.
This year, UP will perform a new song cycle, “Fight or Flight” by Casey Reed, and a new play, “Welcome to the Trash Heap” by Joshua Allen. “Fight or Flight” will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 3 and 11 p.m. Dec. 4, and “Welcome to the Trash Heap” will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 4 and 7:30 p.m. Dec. 5. All of the shows will be in the Lee Norvelle Theatre and Drama Center A200.
“‘Fight or Flight’ has a very interesting structure,” Director Devin May said. “There are musicals which have a plot and song cycles which are disconnected. This one kind of straddles the line.”
The musical is a mostly unbroken stream of song with only brief moments of spoken words between lyrics and continuous piano and drum accompaniment.
The hour-long show is made of multiple minute-long scenarios where the four cast members portray different characters for every scene. Minimalistic set changes, like a bench switched for a desk — coupled with changes in the mood of the music — switch a character from mother to student to wife and back again.
“There’s a theme behind it, the moments of fight or flight, of adrenaline and heightened emotion,” May said.
Every brief scene depicts a different time in the characters’ lives in which a choice needs to be made, moments that define a person. There are snippets of a funeral, receiving a college acceptance letter and a hit-and-run and a job interview, among many others.
“Welcome to the Trash Heap” is a dystopian political play that involves everything from “plastic-faced” people who miraculously come back to life, the world’s smallest cowboy hat and Christian Scientology.
“It’s a very interesting contrast between dark subject matter and lighthearted comedy,” Director Jacob Barber said. “The writer has a good taste for dark humor, and he balances it with some slapstick and off-the-wall humor that you don’t find in a lot of plays.”
The play keeps the viewer guessing as it flips between a chilling scene where a wife threatens to ruin her husband’s life unless he stays with her and a scene filled with funny moments in a Wild West reenactment town.
“I like that you can never be quite sure what’s going to happen next,” Assistant Director Bryant Mehay said. “The scenes go from being comedic and funny to completely serious and filled with drama. I think the audience will enjoy watching these people going through the hardships of life and coming out at the end the best they can.”
The fact the program showcases brand new works is an exciting opportunity for audiences, and it also poses a challenge for student actors, Barber said.
“The actors don’t have a lot to go on, especially with how different their characters have been from version to version of the show,” Barber said. “They have had to put a lot of themselves into these characters and create them. In an established script, you don’t have to do so much of that. They brought life to these characters in ways that even I didn’t expect, and that’s always exciting for me to watch as a director.”
