Bruins bring scripts to spotlight
courtesy of TODD CHENEY
Theater Film and Television playwrights Erica Jones, Jacob Burstein-Stern and Adam Simon stand outside of the Chancellor’s residence on Friday.
By Daniel Boden
Nov. 17, 2009 10:31 p.m.
An aging Holocaust survivor goes head-to-head with Jeopardy’s Alex Trebek. San Diegans fight the cold as they prepare for the next Ice Age. Four make-up counter girls get cutthroat at the Glendale Galleria. The settings and stories for these plays are far from theatrical classics by Shakespeare and Molière ““ but that’s the point of the New Play Festival.
The School of Theater, Film and Television’s New Play Festival takes place fall quarter of every year and features three plays by MFA playwrights. Jacob Burstein-Stern’s play, “Who is Selma Teller?” finished its festival run Nov. 6. Adam Simon’s “Last Autumn” begins this week, playing today through Friday, Nov. 20. The festival’s last play, “Gross Sales,” written by Erica Jones, runs from Wednesday, Dec. 2 to Friday, Dec. 4.
Gary Gardner, theater professor and former advisor to the New Play Festival, views it as an opportunity to get playwrights’ minds out of the classroom while bringing their plays off of the page and onto the stage.
“English majors can write plays, but a play in the theater … is a collaborative effort that takes the director, the designer, and the actors. So we’re trying to give that experience … to every playwright that’s enrolled. It’s letting them hear where the audience laughs or where they fall asleep or whatever the audience is doing because they need to hear it with an audience that is not just their teachers or their peers,” Gardner said.
“Who is Selma Teller?” was well-received with a large turnout and lots of laughter. Burstein-Stern was happy with the response but found that his work stands alone from the audience’s reaction.
“A really good measure if the play is effective or not is if I can sit and just watch the play and not worry about what the audience is thinking. Are people laughing, are they looking away, are they bored? All three days I was really able to focus on the play, which is an internal measure that the play was going well,” Burstein-Stern said.
The playwrights described their plays in terms of little children more than once. Simon talked about collaborating with directors and actors and how a playwright has to eventually further himself from the production end of a play.
“We have a professor who says a director and a playwright have to be like a marriage,” Simon said. “I think it’s more like adoption. You’ve got this kid you’ve raised, and now it’s time to pass it along to somebody else, and you’re still involved, but not really as much.”
The plays are in capable hands as the actors are all from the theater department, and the directors usually are all second-year MFA directing students. This year, however, there were only two second-year directors, so the New Play Festival had to ask Mary Jo DuPrey, a UCLA alumna, to direct Burstein-Stern’s play “Who is Selma Teller?” Jones expressed the fear involved with handing her play over to director Monica Payne and losing a portion of control over her piece.
“It’s so scary, but really exciting. I don’t have children, but I would assume it’s something like watching your kid ride a bike for the first time. You’re very scared. You don’t want them to get hurt. But they surprise you and they’re very capable on their own. The play seems to be standing.”
As “Last Autumn” approaches opening night, Simon has been more willing to loosen the reins and hand over total control to his director, Conor Hanratty.
“The amount of involvement for a playwright as you get closer and closer becomes less and less because it’s important for actors to know who to listen to, and it’s not the playwright, it’s the director. The director is in charge of the production,” Simon said.
Normally, the New Play Festival is reserved for third-year students. Jones, however, is a first-year MFA playwright. As a UCLA world arts and cultures undergraduate, she became involved with the playwriting program and wrote “Gross Sales” last year.
“I love UCLA. In the playwriting program I find that there are a lot of different people’s opinions that I can go off on. I chose UCLA mainly because the program is so small, but the school is so big. Only three of us are admitted into the playwriting program. However we’re at a university … with the resources for 30,000 students. Pretty much anything I want to learn is at my fingertips,” Jones said.
