Sonder, Mask and Bauble’s Donn B. Murphy One Acts Festival this year, refers to “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own,” according to the festival’s actors and writers.
As the actors unpack their characters—and, due to the unique writing process, themselves—the audience experiences sonder after sonder. This is a play about names, about facades, about masks, about people, and about connections.
Sonder had a unique birth. Director Marlene Cox (COL ‘16) and her cast originally intended to produce a different student-authored one-act play, but copyright issues prevented them from bringing it to fruition.
“Stuff happens,” actress Michaela Farrell (COL ‘18) said flatly. The crew had just weeks to write, block, rehearse, and produce a new show.
The script is based primarily on interviews that Cox conducted with her actors. Actress Annie Ludtke (MSB ’18) recounted that Cox had the actors write essays based on prompts, and found similar themes among all of them. Using the interviews, essays, and a collaborative editing process, they created Sonder.
Because the cast had such a large role in the writing of the play, the personalities of the cast are very closely tied with the development of their characters. Each character is named for his or her actress, and in a play that is all about names and identity, this is a significant endeavor.
Of the seven people in the cast, six are freshmen and one is a sophomore. Lack of experience from the young cast was sometimes apparent, but it made the show cozier and made the characters—intended to be reflections of their actors—more likeable.
All seven actors are in constant harmony; there is no main character at any point. Even when individual actors step up to deliver slam poetry on a small stage, all the actors maintain equal attention. The script is written as constant overlapping monologues. The characters interrupt each other’s sentences until they seem to share one powerful, unified voice.
The intimacy of the cast fits perfectly in the cozy, whimsical coffee shop aesthetic, crafted by set designer Sean Sullivan (COL ’17). While the sounds of rainfall and alternative pop blend in the background, the characters read, sip coffee, and chat against Sullivan’s bright blue wall studded with art, records, and posters. They create a busy and slightly hipster tableau. Costume designer Meika Harris (NHS ‘16) has her actors clad in the uniform of 20-something Americans who spend their time in slam poetry venues—flannel, florals, denim, and scarves.
Rarely can actors or directors take credit for the text of a play. In this occasion, they can. The script can seem a little pretentious at times, but so can slam poetry, and so can the 20-something hipsters who spend their time in indie coffee shops.
This play is interesting and authentic. It is impressive both in the production itself, and the difficult, strange situation out of which it was born. Cox and her cast and crew have done a remarkable job, and their cohesion and efforts pay off in their one-act production.
The audience knows what Leah Benz (COL ’18) means when she describes the way we see ourselves as “mirrors twisting around trying to look themselves in the eye.” The characters, in trying to explain themselves, reflect each other, and the Sondern nature of those living around us, more clearly.
Poulton Hall, Stage III
Nov. 19 – Nov. 22
performingarts.georgetown.edu
