Director and second year master of fine arts student Alanna Malone wants audience members to know that "The Unveiling," opening today, has a strong historical background but is not a realistic play.
"It's a dark comedy," Malone said. "There are dark powerful forces working on these people that prompt them into absurd moments and that offers a great theatricality."
In the play, Ferdinand Vanek is invited to a dinner party hosted by his friends Michael and Vera. During the course of the play, the married couple tries to convince Vanek that he should live the way they do.
The play deals with a period in Czech history called normalization. During the 1970s and 1980s, Stalinists promised Czech people that if they gave up personal freedoms they would receive a good job, money and permission to travel. Czech people were not allowed to express dissent or organize.
Vera and Michael have exchanged their personal freedoms for consumable goods and try to convince Vanek this is the best way to live.
"Vera and Michael's attempts to work on him are incredibly threatening, coercive, fun, Vanek is subjected to all these things. Each one is a barrage or an attempt to get Vanek to say, 'You know you're right, I should take a better job,'" Malone said. "His denial and deflection of Vera and Michael's attempts drives them crazy."
Malone said she wanted to direct this play in part because of its relevance and ideas.
"Policies or attitudes have a way each generation has to confront them, encounter them, deal with them, and if we don't have the courage to do that, they morph into more nefarious places that aren't cautified, but become personal attitudes. Although this play comes out of very codified and structured governmental policies and repressive regimes," she said.
Malone said this absurdist comedy relates to this country because of our consumer-oriented society.
"This idea of materialism and people's access to money and power of privilege in the United States, there's a huge divide in, 'Well, I have all this stuff, and this makes me this person. And clearly if you don't, you haven't worked as hard or you haven't pulled yourself together.' Which is really nutso, but there you have it, these prejudices ... How do we allow for that kind of freedom where people don't hurt each other, but they help each other, how do we that in a society?" Malone said.
She said the play grapples with the issue of power.
"People with power are really reluctant to give it up. Who's going to give it up? That's what Vera and Michael are doing in this play, that is their destruction, but the problem with that is that it leaves you spiritually void, with no human dignity and no ability to offer dignity to the people that you're with," Malone said.
Senior theatre arts major Ben Kelley plays lead role Ferdinand Vanek, a failed writer and current brewery worker who visits friends Vera and Michael.
To research for the part, Kelley examined life of playwright Vclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic. It's suggested that Vanek is strongly based on Havel.
Kelley said his character is more skiddish than Havel and has changed during the rehearsal process.
"I started out with him a lot more timid. He wasn't as dominant," Kelley said. "These people are wearing a mask and he's waiting to take off his mask, so he can get way. He's still timid, but I'm starting to find his strength."
Kelley has the lead role, but the fewest lines.
"He's not talking all the time. It's almost like I'm another member of the audience. I'm really subject to (Michael and Vera's) performance and what they're trying to show me," Kelley said. "My character is someone who does not want to accept the changes that are coming to his country."
Kelley said his character is disturbed that his friends have accepted this new life, and even though Vanek resists, normalization has changed the way he lived. His character was forced to give up writing.
"He almost feels like he has the weight of his whole society on his shoulders," Kelley said.
Senior theatre arts and industrial and systems engineering major Adam Ressa portrays Michael who lives a comfortable lifestyle that has been normalized.
"We suggest the recently established and the people who are going with the flow. That's why we have all this great stuff," Ressa said.
Ressa said it's difficult for him to portray this character because Michael is very dark.
"There's a lot of traits that I don't even like in me that I have to bring out for this show," Ressa said. "He's a character where I totally see where's he coming from, and it almost scares me. He represents something horrible. He suggests the establishment."
Ressa said he is subconsciously trying to bring out a part of himself he normally doesn't show.
"I'm a very good person, and I love playing evil," Ressa said.
He said he and his wife Vera don't have the most loving relationship.
"We sure are married. I think we're a unit," Ressa said. "I always look at Vera as a teammate there's some love there - it's very convoluted and weird, and there's sexual energy there."
Sophomore theatre arts and English literature major Sarah Wylie plays Vera, Michal's wife.
"She's crazy. It's a suburban '60s housewife on crack," Wylie said. "My character's very socialist and trying to convert Vanek to our way of living."
Vera's hair is put up in a beehive, which contributes thematically to the show.
"It's kind of funny because we have a beehive mentality through the whole thing. Michael and I are always checking in with each other. It's an interesting thing to do with another actor. You don't always get that chance to be inside the head of another actor," Wylie said.
The actors played around with different dynamics of their relationship and ultimately decided that they would solely focus on Vanek.
"He really is our best friend, and we don't want to do this to him. It was just us, all of our defenses disappear, and we become these monsters. We went from just being plain bitchy - the problem was that it became all about us ... We're doing everything for Vanek," Wylie said.
During the play, Vera unbuttons the top half of her dress and is left in her bra and dances suggestively with Michael.
"I'm very shy, so it really was very difficult for me to work into that. We worked slowly into it," Wylie said.
She said feeling comfortable was key, and her cast members Kelley and Ressa were supportive.
"They're great guys, and I don't have to worry about anything, which is nice," Wylie said.
Vera also tries to seduce Vanek to get him to come over to her side.
"It's a journey on stage. I have to portray a woman who is absolutely desperate. She's willing to have sex with this man. To make him do what they need him to do," Wylie said.
While Vera and Michael may be very desperate, Wylie said the rich historical background of the play is key to the show.
"They performed this play in dining rooms illegally. It was not in theaters. It was not allowed ... It's chalk full of history, and I love that about it because I'm a big history buff. To me, it's all in the history of it than in the acting of it," she said.
Even though she is the only female character in the play, she said Vera doesn't represent women because this is an absurdist play.
"We have the hardest time. It's not a realistic play. It's written so realistically. The things that you can do with it because it is absurdist are fantastic."
Lighting and scenic designer and props coordinator Kerri Friedman, senior theatre production/design and classical studies double major, said she noted the macabre aspects of the show immediately after reading it.
"I really took it as a freak show. This couple has this unbelievable dynamic ... It's not a good environment: it's scary, it's dark, it's the opposite of normal," Friedman said.
She wanted to pick "uncomfortable" colors for the set that were still a spectacle to go along with a "circus" theme for the show.
She ultimately decided on golden yellow, neutral tones and red.
The centerpieces of the set are two almost half circle-shaped yellow couches. She said she found the couches very unappealing and void of all tastes.
"I wanted this to be that hip couple that thinks they're in style, but in actuality they are not very in tune with what should go together and what shouldn't. I really wanted to get that vibe," Friedman said.
There's a carpet in the center of the set that Friedman placed there to represent the characters' different spaces.
"The carpet keeps with color palette, but also isolates Vera and Michael's area, isolates Vanek. The carpet to the wall is Michael and Vera. Vanek is isolated in the chair. There's strange objects that Michael and Vera collect not because they want them or appreciate them, it's because they can have them. They're in a place of status," Friedman said.
Friedman initially wanted to have a mirror on set to loom over the characters, but she settled on using chiming clocks to represent this idea instead.
"The Big Brother idea is in those clocks they're watching. Michael and Vera are under their control. They have a limited amount of time to reach their goal. It's just an interesting dynamic between them and the clock," Friedman said.
At the end of the play, Vanek eventually goes along with Michael and Vera's requests.
"It's comic, but it gets pretty frickin' dark at the end," director Malone said. "It's ultimately disturbing to me at the end, that he's come back into the room. I hope that pisses people off at the end a little bit. I hope that they go, 'Well, that's not me. I wouldn't do that,' and they really take that to heart."