If the Earth Were Flat, a Vertigo production, ran in the Shanley pavilion this weekend. Written by School of Comms Junior Eliza Huang, the show is a mix of dark comedy and deep meaning.
HUANG: “The show is about, like, this couple. Ashley and Tony. They were always moving before, and now, like, the guy, Tony, wants to settle down and have, like, a home Ashley. And now, like, Ashley is having some difficulties adjusting to this new life, while, like, Tony is adjusting pretty well. So she initiates this role playing game about imagining, like a flat earth and just, like, two scenarios happening on the flat earth.
The show was inspired by Huang experience as in international student.
HUANG: I was having a hard time adjusting to this new environment. It’s like, what if this play is about the attachment to your previous life, like and your adjustment and transitioning and entirely new life. And what if you can’t work through that?
School of Communication junior Felix Gaddie directed the show
GATTIE: But I think through all the humor of it and the extremes, it really was like, I could see the allegory for Eliza’s own experience being an international student from China. … And so I know that Eliza is a really funny person and it’s kind of dry and dark humor. And I immediately thought, oh, I could definitely find ways to draw that humor out and make it ridiculous.
Conveying these complex themes took a lot of collaboration. School of Communication Junior Izzy Orenstein plays Martha, one of the role playing characters.
ORENSTEIN: I have a scene partner that I do, like, basically all my scenes are with him. His name is Creighton. And we basically like, do a lot of work…to get comfortable with each other and like, we have a lot of like physicality with each other.
The heavier parts of the script also required careful consideration from Huang, and Gattie, as well as the actors, especially for Orenstein.
ORENSTEIN: My character comes to the edge of the earth to kill herself. So they’re just like, I will say, like, when I was preparing how I’m going to like prep for my character, I took a lot of consideration. Like, I don’t want to accidentally run into any of my own personal feelings that I could be brought into this and then I’m like hurting myself by playing the role.
As a student written production, the show went through a more complicated rehearsal process than a traditional script
GATTIE: The hardest part is that it’s this new student work, which means that the script keeps changing up until like officially three weeks before the show, but it keeps changing into until like last night. It’s still changing. And I think it’s difficult. It’s such a fun challenge with Delta difficult to work with a student playwright. And a lot of the work is like devising things, like devising these directions because like Eliza might have written something, but we don’t know what it’s going to look like until we see it up on its feet.
Sophomore Seidy Pichardo, the producer and scenic designer, says she enjoys student written projects for their uniqueness
And it’s just a bunch of people taking something so small, the smallest idea that someone else has had and then just running with it. Like, Eliza came up with this on her own writing it alone in a playwriting class at school at Northwestern, and now it’s here and it’s just like going up on stage.
The production team worried about filling seats for a new show.
PICHARDO: People don’t want to go see shows that are also new because they don’ t know what it’s about. They’re like, I would rather see Legally Blonde, you know? And that’s, like, familiar.. You gotta give a little trust. A little trust because you never know when down the line something that we make will be the next thing. Be the next big thing. And it’s really fun.
For WNUR News, I’m Savannah Bond
