Chrys Weedon | Entertainment Editor
On Nov. 19, in a small, black-box type room in the Math and Nursing building, a handful of ten-minute plays were showcased. Audience members sat in a semi-circle, humming in anticipation to see the four ten-minute plays being performed: “Koffee,” “The Role of Della,” “Bending Over Backwards” and “Is It Me?” All of the plays were directed by students, all of which were women; all the actresses were women as well. Additionally, two of the short plays were written by their student-directors.
Madeline Weinstein, a junior in the Western theatre program, was featured in “Koffee” and “The Role of Della.”
“My favorite part was watching myself and the other actresses around me grow into their roles,” said Weinstein, “we started off basic and then gradually melded more into our characters and created our own versions.”
“Koffee” was a short vignette into the life of a woman having a heated, posthumous conversation with a friend from high school who recently died in a car accident.
In “The Role of Della,” an actress gets put through the wringer in an audition by a ruthless director, who is later revealed to be an imposter attempting to steal her acting technique.
“Is It Me?” showed a scene of two women waiting in a lobby to be called in for an interview. The audience hears every thought in the women’s heads: sizing each other up, judging each other, putting themselves down, wondering who forgot to put on deodorant.
The scene of “Bending Over Backwards” showed a young writer pitching a TV show to her zanny and sexually explicit boss who had a knack for acting out various positions.
“Since the shows are only 10 minutes, they didn’t require much rehearsal,” said Weinstein of the preparation process. “Because I was in two shows, I had double the rehearsal, but even then, they were more fun and chill rather than worrisome and scary.”
Contact the author at howlentertainment@wou.edu
