A weekend of new plays

The Festival of New Plays started on Thursday night and showcases a weekend of students’ original works and staged plays from professionals.

The festival is hosting three performances by students, which are called One Day Plays, only allowing participating students to complete an original play in 24 hours. 

Within that one day, though, three of the playwrights are only given six hours to write scripts. 

For Willem Lim, a sophomore journalism major, who originally auditioned to be an actor, ended up with his first playwriting role. 

“I have a basic idea of writing fiction, like stories and stuff…(but) I feel really nervous because I’ve never written a script before,” Lim said. “And then not being as efficient with the time that I have, which is very limited.” 

Brooklyn Mauch, a senior advertising major, is another first-time student playwright, but is not unfamiliar with the territory, as she has been involved with the event her freshman and sophomore year. 

“This year, we’re doing things a little differently, and this is the first time that I’m involved in the staged readings,” Mauch said. “I’m excited to be a part of the (readings).” 

Mauch also said that another new thing the festival is doing is directors are able to cast however they like for the plays.  

Along with the student works, there are three guest professional playwrights, who not only are aiding students with their plays, but are giving staged readings of original plays, along with a discussion. 

“For The Festival of New Plays, the same playwrights, we picked new plays that (have) never been produced before to do staged readings for that, and it’s a different show every night.” Mauch said. “So, it’s really a unique experience that you don’t really get to do unless you’re a professional actor in like, New York or LA, or something.”

The featured playwrights and plays are: “This is Crazy!” by Deb Hiett, “The Care and Feeding of Restless Souls” by Aly Kantor and “I’ll Be Your Villain” by Chelsea Sutton. 

“It’s great to have that kind of thing here because like, when are you going to meet a professional playwright in South Dakota?” Mauch said. 

Jim Wood, associate director of the Performing Arts and artistic director of the SDSU theater and dance program, is also a producer as well as a director for one of the stage readings during the Festival of New Plays. Wood has been part of the event since the beginning, which is now in its fourth run. 

“It’s been kind of fun just seeing where the trends of playwriting go,” Wood said. “And also how our students engage with the professional playwrights that we bring in, and expose them to new works and the processes of creating a play.” 

With the tight deadline for student playwrights, it can seem stressful to complete a play in 6 hours, but it always seems to fall into place in year’s past. 

“One year, we had a student who sat down to write and then just went blank,” Wood said. “And realized he had two hours to write the play, but then he got it written and he submitted it to a conference and got an award for it.” 

Official play performance events started on Thursday at 7 p.m. and will go through 2 p.m. on Sunday at the Oscar Larson Performing Arts Center in the Fishback Studio. 

Students are welcome to watch the plays from students and from guest playwrights for free. 

“It’s not something that a lot of undergraduates get exposure to in their programs, so we’re kind of excited to be able to do that,” said Wood.

Members of the public can purchase Festival of New Plays tickets at https://sdstate.evenue.net.