Student Blog: Roulette III: Through the Decades

This past week, I had the absolute pleasure of debuting a brand new play of mine at my school, Dobbins Conservatory for Theatre and Dance. This is probably one of my new favorite pieces I’ve ever written and I’m sad to let it go so soon, but I could not be happier with how it went. This month, I wanted to talk briefly about Roulette, what it is, how I felt about it, how I came upon writing this piece, and just how cool it is that I get to do this.

Firstly, Roulette is a showcase of student written one acts. The entire show is completely student written, student produced, student directed, student performed-The entire show is completely run by students which I think is so cool and so important. This is the third year it has been done here at Dobbins. Last year, I was lucky enough to co-direct a piece for it, and this year I’ve been really lucky to write a piece for it. Each year has a different theme. The first year was Grimm fairytale themed but with new modern twists on it, last year each piece was inspired by a piece of artwork also done by a student at semo, and this year's theme was through the decades. Each piece took place in a different year starting in the 1970’s and ending in the 2010’s. I was assigned the 1970’s and I was terrified. I’m gonna be so for real, that is the last time period I wanted because it was the time period I knew the least about. I was so scared. I had never been given parameters-like a time period-when writing before. I’ve always just freely wrote about whatever I wanted. This however meant that I had parameters that I had to follow. I had no idea what I was going to do.

I started going through different things I knew about the 70’s and events that happened. I knew that it was when the Vietnam War was going on and I knew the draft was going on and that people were fighting for peace. That’s it, that’s all I got. Then, I remembered that in a class I took last spring, we had talked about the Kent State Massacre that happened in May of 1970 and I remember being just so appalled and mad about it. That singular event sparked so much. That was it. I knew that, that is what I needed to write about. So that’s what I did.

My play, The Worst Types of People, follows two college students, April and Mandy, as they prepare for a protest on Kent State University’s campus against the presence of the national guard. All is well until Mandy’s overprotective boyfriend, Chris, comes over and is very insistent on them staying home. This spirals then into something much deeper than posters and protests.

Something really cool that I got to do to help with this lil play, is that I got to interview my aunt Patty about her experience in high school in the 70’s. It was so fascinating to just sit down and talk to her and hear all of her stories.

After I finished writing, I handed my draft off to the wonderful director of my piece, Peighton Robinson, and she couldn’t have picked a better cast and could not have directed it more beautifully. I sat in on the first rehearsal, but after that I didn’t see the piece again

until the day before our tech run. I loved getting to kind of sit back on this one and watch other people’s interpretations of my work. It is still so wild to hear words that I wrote coming out of other people's mouths, I don’t think I’ll ever get over that.

We had our tech rehearsal which was a little chaotic-but what first tech run isn’t, but we had a blast. It was a late night rehearsal due to other rehearsals and such going on, so most of us showed up in PJ’s and had snacks and we all just got to watch each other’s plays for the first time and it was truly wonderful. It is so cool to watch my friends put on their own work and perform. Everything was ready to go for opening night the next day. We had an overly packed house for our opening, standing room only which is insane but the show ran very smoothly and went really well. Our second and final night was also wonderful, my aunt Patty and my mom even got to come out and see it which made me really happy.

At first I was terrified to take this on, but now I couldn’t be more grateful. Showcases and things like these never cease to make me step back and just realize how blessed I am that I get to do things like this. That I get to participate in something so cool. I get to do this. And I get to do this for my career for the rest of my life. And I’m so grateful. Go support new work and student work. We always need all the love and support we can get. As always, go do good things.

Roulette graphic by Joshua David Neighbors

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