Student actors rarely get the chance to develop a script along with the writer.
Tonight, University Theatre will premiere “Love/Sick” by playwright John Cariani.
“Love/Sick” is a play comprised of nine vignettes, telling tales of the
various stages and types of love. However, the love stories are set in
an alternate suburban reality.
“It’s realism with a twist; it’s realism amped up,” said Nancy Hale, an actress who portrays an obsessive, impulsive woman.
Working to present a new production can be a daunting task, but the team was able to work directly with Cariani.
The team used him as a resource and helped him finalize certain aspects
of the show, ensuring that choices actors and crew made were what he
intended. Cariani
spent three days during the beginning of rehearsals with the cast and
crew to collaborate on everything from the sets to how characters were
going to function.
A final script for the show was not completed and delivered until the middle of October because it was a work in progress.
This opportunity for the theatre department presents new challenges.
“This play has never been done before, so we were kind of pulling from scratch,” set designer Bri Kuffell said.
Kuffell presented Cariani
with a model of the set plans, hoping to receive feedback and to
solidify the efforts. She said she drew inspiration for the alternate
suburban universe from windows and ran with it.
“It allowed us to explore more,” Kuffell said. “We didn’t have to stick with reality, and it might freak people out.”
Costume, hair and makeup designer Tyler Phillips also took advantage of
the alternate setting, choosing things that might exist in a world
“linked to this one, but is a little more stylized than you’d see in a
suburban one.”
“It’s a blessing and a curse that I didn’t have anything to look back on,” he said.
Phillips said he heavily incorporated what the actors felt about their characters and how they imagined them being presented.
The incomplete script allowed the actors to offer suggestions to Cariani, particularly ones about what they felt their character may or may not do.
“I was very excited [about] the whole process of working on this whole
work, especially with John when he wasn’t finished,” Jon Whitney, a
multi-character actor, said. “I put myself into this show, and I feel
like part of me is in this show.”
Macie Tonn, an actress in the play, said the atmosphere of creating the final product was open, and ideas were constantly bounced around.
“It’s so nice to work with people that are open like that,” Tonn
said. “It’s amazing that we got to work with the playwright. You almost
never, as an actor, get to work with the playwright, especially with a
new work.”
Parts of finalizing the show were trial and error, Whitney said.
Because there were constant changes and new drafts of the scripts, people got attached to certain things that eventually were cut, Andrea Redmount said. She is a dramaturge — a person who researches and helps develop plays or operas.
Redmount said she tried to fix this problem by picking out bits and pieces of the various drafts and edits that people were attached to or liked. She put them together to create a new version scene that they were struggling with, sent it to Cariani and received mixed signals. However, he ended up going with a scene similar to the one that Redmount generated.
“On paper, I’m so proud of that,” Redmount said. “I’ve never been so proud to put my name on something.”
Redmount said there was a sense of ownership from everyone involved in the play.
“I can say that ‘Love/Sick’ by John Cariani is the way it is because of the work that I did.” Redmount said. “It’s all ours. We were the first ones to get to do the first version of this script.”
What: “Love/Sick”
Where: Strother Theatre
When: 7:30 p.m. tonight through Saturday, Wednesday and Nov. 8-10
2:30 p.m. Sunday
Tickets are available at the University Theatre Box Office
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