UGFest 2013, Jan. 26

Aisha McManus and Kelsey McNeil in Turning Point at UGF

I attended last night's UGFest 2013 and I thought the students explored some interesting themes, including the mental divide between audiences and theater writers, what a real-life Facebook would look like, and what would happen if a child had an imaginary friend who told her to do evil things.

Having watched the nine scenes, I thought some of the samples worked as 10-minute plays, some didn't work so well, and some I'd love to see developed into full length features.

 I'm willing to accept that because the actors and writers only had a limited time to work on the material, the performances might have seemed a little unpolished. There is a difference, I feel, however, between being rough around the edges and just bad. I'll go into the difference more later in my critique.

The scenes were, in order in which they were given,

1. A Dinner to Die For, written by Sawyer Edmister featuring Mark Lawhon, Rachel Altman and Allison Semenza;

2. Ick written by Keern Haslem featuring Morgan Anderson, Trish Loeffler and Zachary Jarvis;

3. The Lost Theatre written by Saif Alsaegh featuring Ken Taylor and Matt Twedt;

4. A Really Bad Intern written by Mariah Hodge featuring Sterling Moss, Kerri Anderson and Joanna Kauffman;

5. Turning Point written by Matthew Hundley featuring Aisha McManus and Kelsey McNeil;

6. For Real Book written by Jessica Burton and featuring Leyetta Way and MacKenzie Way;

7. Mind Freak written by Cheyenne Murano featuring Matt Way;

8. Kidnapped written by Amie Steffes featuring Allen Way, Talyna Conley and Amanda Cetnarowski

9. The Shriners written by Tianta Stevens featuring Brendon Winston, Mary Wilmore, Brittani Huchstein and Janette Conley.

I'll list what I liked first.

Turning Point, I felt, had believable, personal dialogue delivered by both Aisha and Kelsey and written by Matt.

The scene involved a couple at a dinner table in what starts as a discussion that turns into a heated argument.
In the middle, Aisha gives a monologue about Kelsey's character, and the fact that after the argument, she dies from a disease that's implied she's been dealing with for a while. It could be implied, as well, that possibly the disease is the reason behind the argument, although that connection is never implicitly made.

The pain in Aisha's voice seems all too real, just as real as the anger in both actors voices and stage presence during the argument. It felt as if the audience was watching a lively discussion/argument between a real couple.

Matt, or Irish, has a talent for writing dialogue. Also, Kelsey showed me a side in her acting that I've never seen before. I think, that many people might not have seen before. She's growing as an actress and it's fun to see. Aisha, too, always when I've seen her on stage, gives a strong performance. She played a great Mama in Chicago, and she has a knack for demanding attention when she's on stage. That's not easy to do.

Moving on, I really liked Jarvis's interpretation of his character in Keern's Ick.
Ick is an imaginary friend of a small girl, played by Anderson, who can't be older than 8 or 9.

As I was sitting near Keern in the theater, afterward I told him I thought Jarvis's character was expressive and believable. I still do after playing it through my head again.
In the scene, his character encourages Anderson to kill her mother.
With such chilling material, he plays it both nonchalant and playfully. His use of a striped cane made it, to me, feel very Dr. Seuss like at times, also.

Saif's scene with Ken and Matt Twedt was perhaps the most powerful of the evening. I loved the use of props  to help convey the message. The skit showed the gap between audiences and theater writers, and how one man struggled to connect with audience members as a writer, even though he felt a stronger connection when he simply designed the sets. I'm sure I'm missing some of the message, but it was quite a treat to see. Matt as the main character and Ken as the narrator made the script come alive, and it was really something to see considering this was Saif's first dramatic piece he's written.

During intermission, I heard several people comment about how impressed they were with Saif's writing, including one Michael Gilboe. I say I have to agree. I look forward to seeing more from him.

My only critique of the piece is that the lighting could have been a bit tighter, but I'm willing to accept that because they only had a short time to work on it they didn't have time to perfect the lighting. Given more time they could have figured it out.

To wrap up things I liked, I thought the last play of the evening was the funniest, as it had the whole theater cracking up.

Tianta's Shriners showed what it might look like if people were physical interpretations of their Facebook profiles. It was a neat idea executed wonderfully by Brendon Winston, Mary Wilmore, Brittani Huchstein and Janette Conley.

My favorite moment came when Brendon slapped a picture of his ex girlfriend on his "wall" which was a cardboard box he wore on his chest. The picture hung near his crotch. It made sense because when a guy posts a picture of a good looking woman on his own wall, you can imagine that's what he'd do if it were an actual thing he wore.

My only critique would be I felt it got a little preachy at the end when the characters remove their shrines and become friends again.

I understand the message, but to me it would have been funner to just leave it as a fun interpretation of Facebook and leave out the take-home message that people need to step away from Facebook in order to have regular relationships. That might be true in a lot of cases, but I can point to situations where the opposite is true, too.

With that I'll get into a few more things I thought needed improvement.

Firstly, I would advise several of the writers and actors to think of different, unique ways to kill someone on stage, as gruesome as that might sound.

In A Really Bad Intern and Kidnapped, characters were all strangled.

I think part of the problem was in how it was enacted and that it was a technique repeated in three different scenes.

Character A would come from behind at Character B and put a rope around his neck and pull on it. The character would fall silently to his death.

I didn't find it believable because if you were to actually do that to someone, they would have at least screamed and put up more of a fight. Unless a person's mouth was covered, I don't think they'd silently fall to the floor.

I'd encourage the writers and actors to think of different, unique ways to do it that seem interesting on stage. You can find a prop knife, a prop gun, you can push your character off a cliff of some sort.

That would be my main critique although I have a few specific ones, also.

One thing I noticed in A Dinner to Die For was that although Mark had some great lines courtesy of Sawyer, it felt like he was merely reading them from the page. When you're on stage you need to emote, emote and emote some more. There's a balance between overacting believable acting, but just reading from the page is neither of those.

Some of that could be that he had only a limited time with the script, but other actors had just as much time and some of them didn't need the script in front of them at all. It would have been nice to see the lines, which like I said were central to the scene, delivered better.

In Kidnapped, the scene involved a creepy-looking man who captures two sisters.
The reason is never explicitly stated why he wanted to kidnap them. Or if it was, I missed it.

Also, one of the characters said the creepy-looking guy was a paparazzi photographer, although I didn't see how he could be without a camera. Paparazzi are paid to take photos, they wouldn't be using a cell phone to take them.

He didn't need a fancy camera prop, but anything other than a cell phone would have made it more believable for me.

There were moments where I felt the panic of being the girls in the second act. I just couldn't connect the dots very well as to why they were there in the first place, or why one sister killed the other one after they escaped.

In Mind Freak, while I enjoyed Matt Way's performance, I had an issue with the reveal at the end.

In the scene, Matt plays a character who plays two to three different characters talking to each other about publishing a book. In a way it represented the two voices nearly every author have in their heads. One that wants to see a book published, and another that doesn't want anyone else to read their work because it's too personal. Any writer, I feel, can relate to those ways of thinking.

 Matt has a good amount of acting experience and it shows whenever he's on stage. Although it was just him on stage, it did feel like he was playing two or more people talking to each other. He did a good job and he's always interesting to watch.

The end, however, came with a bit of a "no duh" moment.

Matt looks into a mirror and realizes he's been talking to himself and not the multiple characters in his head. He says, "I've, I've been talking to.....myself?"

I'm not saying it's bad to show a character make a somewhat obvious realization, but as a viewer watching this scene, I was thinking, "well of course he is. We've seen him talking to himself this whole time."

It's kind of like if you're watching a movie and a character walks with a limp, although he or she might not notice it. Then, at the very end the character turns to the screen and states, "Wait, you mean I have a limp? I had no idea"

It's pretty obvious to the viewer. Maybe instead he could have been overtaken by one of the voices, or he could have gone crazy from the voices, or he could have talked to another person who also started hearing the voices.

My point is that there could have been different ways to end the scene that didn't seem as painfully obvious.

Finally, I think many of the scenes worked really well and show off the skills of both the writers and the actors. You couldn't beat it as far as free entertainment goes. They could have easily charged $5 or $6 a head and I doubt people would have felt like they weren't getting their money's worth.

I applaud UGF and Gilboe for keeping it free, however, as it made it even easier for people to come check out what some of our own creative people are doing.