By Liam Otten
All parents have secrets, but some parents really have secrets.
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| Photo by David Kilper |
| Brooke Bagnall (left) and Robin Kacyn as sisters Moo and Greta in Marisa Wegrzyn's darkly comic family drama Psalms of a Question- able Nature, winner of the A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Competition, which debuts Feb. 20-23 in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre. |
Performances begin at 8 p.m. Feb. 20-21; at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. Feb. 22; and at 2 p.m. Feb. 23.
Psalms, winner of University's 2002 A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Competition, centers on a pair of sisters, Greta (Robin Kacyn) and Moo (Brooke Bagnall), who are reunited by their parents' seemingly random death in a car accident.
Greta, Moo's elder by 20 years, is suffering through some dire financial circumstances and is determined to sell the family's rural farmhouse. Yet Moo, who had still been living at home, resists, all too aware of the lethal secret waiting in the basement below — a secret she is nevertheless dying to reveal.
"The story is very clever, very plot-driven," said Heid Winters Vogel, who directs the show for the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences. "One of my favorite things about Marisa's work is how she's able to approach seemingly mundane topics — in this case, family relationships — in really strange and interesting ways.
"It's a very demanding play for the actresses because they're both on stage the entire time with a lot of high, emotional moments," Vogel added. "Yet it's so well written and the characters are both so strong that I think it becomes very empowering — Robin and Brooke get to go places they don't normally get to go in real life."
The Hotchner competition selects one student play each year by blind jury. Winners spend the next year revising and refining their works and a full theatrical production is mounted the following spring.
Wegrzyn also won the Hotchner contest in 2001 for Killing Women, which told the story of an aspiring young hit-woman, and was runner-up in 2000 with Polar Bears on U.S. 41, which the author describes as "the story of a young woman who conversed with alphabet soup and the man who comes into her life."
In a rare honor, both Polar Bears and Killing Women were selected for further development by the WordBRIDGE Playwrights Lab at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., and a production of Killing Women was directed there last summer by Ellen Graham, associate artistic director of WordBRIDGE.
This fall, as part of the PAD's A.E. Hotchner Play Development Lab, Wegrzyn workshopped Psalms with K.C. Davis, head of the playwriting program at the University of Nevada and dramaturge on the original production of Tony Kushner's Angels in America.
"Marisa is creating a lot of very good buzz," Vogel said. "She's really getting people interested in her work."
The set design for Psalms, by junior Alexis Distler, captures the feeling of dusty farmhouse basement, complete with stairs descending onto the stage.
Costumes are by senior Caity Mold-Zern, with lighting and sound by junior Leslie Karpas and freshman Matthew Kitces, respectively.
A.E. Hotchner, a 1940 graduate of Washington University, is the author of numerous screenplays, novels, plays and memoirs, including the 1966 volume Papa Hemingway, which recounts his long friendship with the famous writer.
His memoir, King of the Hill, which recounts growing up in St. Louis, was made into a feature film in 1993.
The A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre is located in Room 208 of the Mallinckrodt Student Center. Tickets for Psalms — $12 for the general public and $8 for WUSTL faculty, staff and students and for senior citizens — are available at the Edison Theatre Box Office, 935-6543, and all MetroTix outlets.
For more information, call 935-6543.