By Emily Sakamoto
This weekend, Stage Femmes will bring the work of Kenyon actors, directors, faculty, and alums together with their first Kenyon Alumni-Written One Act Festival in the Black Box Theater.
The Festival will feature 11 works written by Kenyon alumni and faculty members, including Wendy MacLeod ’81, former professor Meridith Friedman, Will Arbery ’11, Matt Crowley ’11, Patrick Shaw ’07, Japhet Balaban ’09, Julian Sheppard ’92, Grace Gardner ’13 and Beth Hyland ’13.
Works include one-act plays and two monologues, all by persons now involved with professional theatre in their post-Kenyon lives. Each work will be presented twice over the three-performance run, so one must attend two nights in order to see all 11 works the festival has to offer.
Actors in the performances were chosen by each director. The student directors featured are Haleh Kanani ’16, Casey Griffin ’14, Anna Yukevich ’16, Sydney Fishman ’14, Julia Greer ’15, Robbie Sellers ’14, Dyer Pierce ’14, Allie Lembo ’14, Kim Zhang ’16, Foss Baldwin ’15 and Ryan Drake ’14.
Many of the actors and directors have not been heavily involved in Kenyon theatre previously.
“[A new set of actors and directors is] a really good opportunity to see new faces that haven’t been involved in Kenyon theatre before,” said Griffin, literary director and manager of Stage Femmes.
Some directors are working closely with the playwrights, fostering a bond between present and past Kenyon students.
Using work produced by past students and professors provided an opportunity to unite the stage and the craft through a shared common background. “This is a really exciting event for the Kenyon community, because it represents us supporting each other after we graduate,” Griffin said.
Stage Femmes co-president Emma Miller ’15 is excited about how the weekend should turn out.
“These are [almost all]new plays which have never been done anywhere else, and they were all written by people with connections and ties to the community,” Miller wrote in an email to the Collegian. “Some people in the audience will know playwrights who overlapped with their time at Kenyon οΎ… which I think is really unique and incredible.”
Stage Femmes’ series of one-act plays and monologues will open on Friday, Nov. 15 at 6 p.m. The next performance will be on Saturday at 2 p.m., and the final showcase will be Sunday evening at 8 p.m.
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