Curtains rise for students’ Coppola Marathon plays
By Daily Bruin Staff
Dec. 3, 2000 9:00 p.m.
 Illustration by JENNY YURSHANSKY/Daily Bruin
By Kelsey McConnell
Daily Bruin Contributor
Something is different at the Department of Film and Television,
as the usual command to “Roll camera!” is replaced with
the quiet sweeping of a stage’s curtains.
UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television students are
combining their talents for the third annual Francis Ford Coppola
One-Act Marathon, a series of three one-act plays and six 10-minute
plays running in Macgowan Hall through Dec. 8.
The marathon is a unique opportunity for theater, film and
television students to cross into new media. For film students,
testing their silver-screen skills on the stage brings up an array
of new challenges.
“One thing I realized with film is that in so many ways
you can hide from your actors,” said graduate film student
Angela Sostre. “You can hide behind the technical aspects of
your film, or the writing of it, or the production aspects, but in
theater you can’t. It is 100 percent about directing actors,
guiding them.”
Sostre is directing graduate playwriting student Laurel
Ollstein’s “Blackwell’s Corner,” a play
about an artist who is happier living in a delusion than in the
real world. Her reality and fantasy eventually collide in a twisted
meeting with James Dean.
“For playwrights, it is a crucial project to further their
development as writers by enabling them to see their work staged,
and think in a performance context about their writing, rather than
a page context,” said fourth-year theater student Josh Loar,
director of “Last Right Before the Void.”
Having Coppola’s name headline the project is a perk in
itself.
“Coppola is a genius. I respect his work and it would be
quite an honor to have our work be seen by him,” Loar
said.
Coppola, who received his undergraduate degree at UCLA in 1960
and his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1967, lent his name to the
marathon two years ago.
The marathon is important because, as Sostre pointed out,
theater direction is indeed a different game than film direction.
Weiko Lin, film and television student and veteran participant in
the marathon, said that directing a play has to be approached
differently than film directing.
“Theater is a playwright’s world, whereas film,
it’s the director’s world,” he said.
Many film directors praised the playwrights with whom they
worked.
“I was fortunate to be teamed with a very talented writer
whose play kept getting stronger the more it was developed,”
Sostre said.
Lin wrote “Tattooed Heart,” which was featured in
last year’s marathon
“The department was gracious enough to allow me to be
involved with the project ““ this time in the capacity as a
director,” he said.
Lin is directing Brian Holmes’ “Along for the
Ride,” a piece about creativity, sex and failure in Los
Angeles culture.
“It’s an extremely well-crafted play that really
hits the heart and essence of a tragic L.A. story,” Lin said
about the show.
Other featured writers include Rose Martula, a graduate
playwriting student, with her 10-minute play “Better That
Way.” Directed by third-year theater student Megan Larmer,
the play takes place entirely in a restaurant bathroom as two
female best friends on a double date examine the tensions between
them and their takes on love, family, and life.
Meanwhile, Elvis, Darth Vader, Medea and aliens meet a teenage
hitchhiker in graduate playwriting student Jon Dorf’s
“Last Right Before the Void.”
Loar is also directing another of Dorf’s plays “The
Wash,” in which a young homeless man and his dirty clothes
take over the laundry room of a New York apartment.
Jason Bush, an undergraduate theater student, is directing a
British time-warp piece, “Sandwich,” also by
Ollstein.
With so many students participating in the marathon this year,
what is the intrinsic value in the combined effort of both
departments?
“I think it’s very important to balance theater and
film in one’s craft as a storyteller,” Lin said.
Sostre agreed, explaining why the Francis Ford Coppola One-Act
Marathon is important to film and theater students.
“It allows me to meet and creatively collaborate with a
department that I often felt isolated from,” Sostre said.
“This marathon is good for the school because it brings
different people together in a learning environment that is
supportive and creative.”
THEATER: Performances from the Francis Ford
Coppola One-Act Marathon will be held in 1340 Macgowan Hall through
Dec. 8. Admission is free and the shows are open to the public. For
more information, contact the School of Theater, Film and
Television at (310) 206-3235.
