The Emery/Weiner theater department wrapped up the Class of 2024’s Senior Directed Projects with Marissa Bishop, Evelyn Burt, Ethan Canfield, Cortney Murray, and Jeremy Weinstein-Sears making one of the best teams yet.
The Class of 2024’s Senior Directed Projects definitely made their mark with a series of grand performances. Every year, dedicated students from the junior class get the chance to apply for a semester-long course with Director of Fine Arts, Jennifer Bauer-Conley. Students who are chosen learn how to direct, cast, plan, and execute their very own productions.
While ordinary productions at Emery/Weiner have the direction of adult professionals, director Canfield reflects that, “these are plays directed for the students, by the students.” This offers everyone- from the actors to the audience an experience unlike any they have ever seen on an Emery stage.
Canfield directed a tragedy known as “The Dumb Waiter.” This one-act play by Harold Pinter, a British playwright, only has two roles in it. Canfield casted freshman Zach Lester and junior Alex Levy to play these complex characters. The premise of the show is that two hitmen are hired to take out an unknown target. While staying in an apartment waiting to complete the job, they find themselves bickering and arguing, outlining the plays’ overall themes of social class and power. Most of their dialogue centers around a dumbwaiter, a miniature elevator designed to transport food between different rooms. With a shocking unforeseeable ending of Lester’s character, Ben, killing Levy’s Gus, Canfield’s direction left audiences with many nuanced and complex feelings revolving around relationships and violence.
Weinstein-Sears put on a post-war, self-written drama entitled “Two Begin Again” about a dancer, Georgia, played by senior Charlotte Goldstein who broke her leg performing. She alongside her husband Henry, played by senior Eli Karpas, opens up a dance studio and welcome in a young, orphaned, budding dancer Ruth, played by sophomore Carol Giorgi, to be Georgia’s protege and ensure her dancing legacy lives on. Weinstein-Sears’ direction led audiences to sympathize, root, and even cry for the characters as they hoped for a happy ending for the characters, which ended up coming to fruition.
Bishop’s piece was entitled “26 Pebbles.” The show consisted of real testimony by adult survivors of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, CT. Recapping their bereavement processes and experiences during and after the event, forcing audiences to think about the place gun violence has in our society today. Bishop, alongside her cast and crew, spent hours unpacking the nuanced language used in the testimonies in order to gain a totalitarian understanding of the text, which was key in the portrayal of these real people. Audiences were left crying and thinking heavily about why events like this occur, and how we as a society can prevent them.
Murray and Burt took on dramaturg and producer roles in this year’s Senior Directed Projects. Helping actors and technicians involved in the show complete their roles successfully and go into the projects feeling confident in what they were doing. The success of the projects would not have been remotely possible without their contributions.
This tradition is not only an extremely unique opportunity but a rewarding one as well. High school students in the theater department often spend their entire career on stage or backstage waiting for this opportunity and is the perfect culmination as they wrap up their time at Emery/Weiner.
