At the end of each semester, we begin to feel the pressure of change - leaving the friends and the routine we have become accustomed to, pausing our lives for the summer months, and searching for meaning in the complicated tangle of college relationships.
Bare Bodkin's new play, "[sic]," written by senior Caitlin Johnson, follows the lives of six friends in their junior year of college, realistically (and at times comically) detailing how they struggle with and adapt to change.
At its heart, "[sic]" honestly displays the insecurities and traumas that college students combat daily. The play confidently addresses an array of behaviors, ranging from drinking and marijuana use, to homosexuality, to impotence and STIs, to casual sex, to using exercise as a means of coping. Director Brendan Shea, a senior, who directed "Peter Pan" earlier this semester, said, "[After 'Peter Pan'] it's very refreshing to move back to directing realism; '[sic],' especially, holds a mirror up to our daily life."
This mirror, however, does not reflect only a one-dimensional image of individuals and their struggles with relationships. Instead, the actors succeed in creating realistic, emotionally charged characters.
Junior Jen Scherck portrays the self-assured Abbey, who begins the play by telling her boyfriend Jason (senior Dave Adler) that she is interested in S&M. This conversation develops a theme of delving into the awkward occurrences of relationships. Sophomore Lyle Friedman, who also writes for the Daily, continues this trend, playing the sweetly guileless Amanda, who naively comments to TJ (senior Nick Jandl), "No offense, it's always good to see you, but why are you here?" as he shows up unannounced while she is alone in her apartment.
Adler brings to life a questioning and compromising type of innocence in his character Jason. Throughout the play, Jason questions his sexuality, announcing at one point, "Everyone is a little bit bi!"
Freshman Brenann Stacker, senior David Jenkins and Jandl use their characters to offer answers to the questions the play raises. The audience meets Jenkins' introspective character Chris in the middle of a speech in which he compares life to drowning in an ocean. By the end of the play, however, he understands enough to explain to Jason the difference between love and attraction: "Your eyes glue to the hollow below my Adam's apple ... [but] you and Abbey love each other."
TJ, though characteristically indecisive throughout most of the play, finally admits the ferocity of his love, exclaiming, "It makes you want to sing and punch someone at the same time!"
Nina (Stacker) struggles most visibly during "[sic]" with her relationship with TJ. She concludes the play by admitting her true fear: the fear of change.
Johnson's writing makes that fear apparent in Nina's line, "This is the first family we get to choose," which characterizes the fear everyone faces as they move away from what they know.
The actors faced challenges in the development of such emotionally complex characters and their relationships, which, for college students, were both familiar and foreign at once.
"I've never really acted before," Scherck said. "I try to draw on my own experiences, but I want to make sure my character differs from who I am."
Stacker explained how the actors used improvisation to find out who they were before the play.
"Before you grasp that, it's hard to know how to handle the character. The script did not spell out who we were," Stacker said.
The show, which will take place today and tomorrow in Lewis Lounge, utilizes simple props and staging, which is appropriate for the straightforward honesty of the play.
Stage manager Jenny Gerson, a sophomore, noted that by using the couches in Lewis as seating, the audience will feel more intimately connected to the actors and "the play will hit home more."
Regardless of the setting, the emotional depth of the play's characters and themes insure that the audience has no trouble putting themselves in the characters' uncomfortable yet engaging places.
