*What: *“A Festival of New Plays”
When: 7:30 tonight through Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
Where: Cave Theatre
*Cost: *$6
This year, “A Festival of New Plays” will feature two student-run, one-act shows.
The first of these performances, “Daughter Box,” tells the story of a grieving mother.
The play explores how the mother deals with painful memories while striving to come to terms with the realities of the present.
Rebecca Austin, a junior theatre studies major, wrote the story.
“The core of ‘Daughter Box’ comes from my own interest in grief and how it affects individuals as well as families,” Austin said.
The second of the plays is “Kimball/Sedgwick,” written by Brent Eickhoff, a junior directing and theatre education major.
“Kimball/Sedgwick” tells the tale of two characters dealing with a breakup through a series of mathematically formulated meetings on a Chicago L.
Eickhoff’s goal for this production had been to portray the turmoil and confusion that comes with the end of a long-term relationship.
Colin Hart, a junior theatre studies major, is the director for the festival and is responsible for making this opportunity available to other theatre students.
This is the first time that the Department of Theatre and Dance will use the work of students in the formal production season. Hart proposed the idea in order to fill the gap in the Cave Theatre production schedule.
Hart and his committee of faculty members selected “Daughter Box” and “Kimball/Sedgwick” as the two best script submissions.
“At their hearts, both ‘Daughter Box’ and ‘Kimball/Sedgwick’ are about the cyclical, nonlinear nature of relationships and how that makes it hard for us to move on,” Hart said. “Eventually, the loop must break or we will continue riding a perpetually spinning train of thought until it bursts into flames that consume us.”