“˜Hunger’ focuses on social injustices

By Phoebe Bronstein
Daily Bruin Contributor

Nine actors, a dedicated director and the darker side of
humanity surround the upcoming production of Tadeusz
Rosewicz’s “The Hunger Artist Departs.”

The UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television debuts its
production of this play tomorrow night. Based on Franz
Kafka’s original story, “The Hunger Artist,”
about the struggles of being human, this play features
undergraduate theater students in a performance that displays the
intense experience, as the title suggests, of an artist starving
himself as his form of art.

“(The play) is about a man starving himself who is totally
selfless but essentially is misunderstood by the people he is
living for,” said Luke Bailey, a first-year theater student
who plays the role of artist.

Director Cheolseung Kim, a third-year M.F.A. candidate, directs
the small cast. After holding auditions at the end of fall
quarter 2001, Kim held a multitude of rehearsals beginning the
first week of winter quarter.

Bailey believes that although challenging, the experience of
working with Kim has been beneficial to him.

“(Kim) makes you work hard, but he knows how to pull
things out of people. It’s been wonderful,” Bailey
said.

The play’s action centers around the hunger artist, who
starves himself for 40 days at a time. As he does this, he is
taken advantage of by the people surrounding him.

Since the actors have had to look inside themselves and allow
the characters to become a part of them, the themes have started to
affect the cast and become real.

“The part that reaches me is that there’s a real
innocence in (“˜The Hunger Artist’s’) intent, but
society misconstrues it and he is a victim of how people treat
him,” Bailey said. “It’s very tragic in that
sense.”

The play searches the depths of humanity and both the director
and cast believe that the performance will force audiences to
confront some of the most disturbing aspects of human nature.

“”˜The Hunger Artist’ is a mirror of society,
and we as people fear things in ourselves and, in turn, fear those
things in other people,” said Kristen O’Connor, a
third-year theater student who plays the impresario’s
wife.

Her character, along with the impresario, the keepers of
“˜The Hunger Artist,’ represent much of the corruption
of the society surrounding the play.

O’Connor portrays the wife, a woman who sees herself as
subordinate to her controlling husband and to the society she lives
in; thus, she eventually looks to the Hunger Artist for help.

“She is a slave to the society and she reaches out to (the
artist) for salvation,” O’Connor said. “She
places her own self-worth on his accepting her, yet he never
can.”

Along with the intensity of these issues, the director thinks
the effectiveness of the acting is heightened by the physical
presentation of the play.

The set of the play is unusual in that the stage has been
transformed into a circular setting so that the audience is seated
around the play and can view it from different angles.

“We used a circular setting called an arena setting, like
in the Greek plays, so that the audience is much closer to the
action and eventually they will feel involved in it,” Kim
said.

Kim and company invite viewers to experience the production
they’ve been devoting months to.

“The (stage) is holy and you have to devote your entire
soul to this space. The play has become a part of me and occupied
my entire life,” O’Connor said.

THEATER: “The Hunger Artist
Departs,” shows on March 8, 9,13-16 at 8 p.m. and March 10,
16 at 2 p.m. at the Little Theater in UCLA’s Macgowan Hall.
Tickets can be purchased by calling the Central Ticket Office at
(310) 825-2101.