Theatre II takes look at human nature
‘Summer’ considered a minimalist play with only one act, two monologues
Posted on February 11, 2008
“This play is sensual, it’s sexual, it’s every part of humanity you can imagine,” said Stephanie Ganacoplos, a senior theatre and dance major and director of Theatre II’s latest production “Suddenly Last Summer” by Tennessee Williams.
She added that the play is “desperate, it’s violent, it’s vicious.” These are fitting descriptors since the content of Theatre II plays tend to explore a wide range of issues and material.
“The content itself is beautifully disturbing... I think the beautiful part is it’s disturbing because it is humanity,” Ganacoplos said.
Williams is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning plays “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” but “Suddenly Last Summer” is markedly starker. The single-act play is mostly comprised of two monologues and is performed by only seven characters. Despite this minimalism, junior Laura Webb, who plays Violet Venerable, said that the play manages to pack in “layer upon layer of discovery. Every rehearsal, every time I perform it I discover something new about it which I think is very cool.”
Despite her appreciation for the play now, Ganacoplos said she was initially averse to directing “Suddenly Last summer” because of a version she saw performed a couple of years ago.
“The production was very ‘villain’ and ‘victim.’ I saw that director’s vision and I hated that vision and I hated it,” Ganacoplos said.
“It’s a piece of creative writing. It is Williams. In this play, he allows the reader to think critically of him… I think this is Tennessee Williams at his most vulnerable and most critical of himself, but not cynical.”
This vulnerability, Ganacoplos said, should be very evident to the audience. In “Suddenly Last Summer,” Tennessee Williams created his character Sebastian to reflect complex and sometimes unflattering aspects of his own nature.
“We were forced to think critically and reflect and open up and be vulnerable to each other, which as actors that’s hard to do because you have to show that onstage… but we let ourselves,” Ganacoplos said.
Webb said that this was the most difficult and most rewarding part of playing her character.
Her desire is that the audience will walk away from the play and ask, “What is evil, what is good? What is manipulative and what is just desperation?”
With only four weeks to rehearse, it was a “struggle,” according to Webb. But now the actors express their anticipation of the play’s opening.
“I’m excited about opening. I definitely think we are ready,” Webb said.
