Villanova Theatre is gearing up to present our second annual graduate student produced Studio Show! WE MUST SHARE EVERYTHING explores the complex, and often confusing, landscape of private and public spaces. Second year graduate assistant and director of the show, Lexa Grace, has shared with us some of her inspiration behind the production. Check our her blog post below!
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| Lexa Grace in Ireland during her internship at the Abbey Theatre |
This past summer I had the privilege of traveling to Ireland to study and work with The Abbey Theatre along with several of my fellow classmates. One day I was walking the streets of Dublin with one of my Villanova friends. We were discussing the differences between Irish and American cultures. There is a stereotype that Irish people are friendlier and more open than Americans. In many ways my friend and I found this to be true. It seemed that every time we went to a bar, we ended up in a passionate discussion about politics with an Irish stranger. While both of us enjoyed these interactions, we knew that they would never happen in America.
As Americans we are taught that certain subjects are not meant to be shared in public, especially not with strangers. Yet these social rules are broken all the time, depending on the setting and the people involved. This has become even more prevalent with the advancement of social media. As my friend and I continued to talk that day, I realized that we both had vastly different beliefs on privacy, even within our own American culture.
I grew up with very little regard for privacy. This had partly to do with being involved in theatre from a young age and partly to do with the fact that I lived with two younger siblings, and was always forced to share everything- from my room to my clothes, to the last bite of ice cream in the freezer. My friend on the other hand, was an only child and learned to love and respect privacy from a young age. This dynamic of public and private spaces is what first sparked my interest in exploring privacy as a theme. At the time, however, I had no real concept for how this idea could be expressed in the theatre-- a place where privacy is under constant negotiation between actors, audience, and characters.
Then school started again and submissions for Villanova Theatre’s second annual Studio Show were announced. I knew that I wanted to submit a devised piece. My love for devised theater comes from a strong need to produce new work and a firm belief that everyone has an original idea. The beauty about devised work is that it allows individuals to share and sift through all of their original ideas, find the best ones, and then merge them together with other people’s inspiration. With this in mind, I collided my two interests together: a devised show exploring the multi-faceted views of privacy.
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| Graduate Students Alexandra King and Andrea Rumble-Moore in rehearsals |
Over the course of several days, my ensemble and I completely indulged in all of our creative thoughts on privacy. Some were interesting, some were weird, some were hilarious, and others were completely unrelated to anything we had conceived of. Once we had a pool of concepts, we began to isolate the ideas that could be developed into something that we needed to share. This sculpting process led us to the creation of a script, which has been crafted and edited throughout our rehearsal process.
Now that we are a week away from opening it seems almost unreal. All of the work we created, all of the pieces we included in the performance and even more of the pieces we cut- all of this started with a conversation, with a friend on a park bench about our different ideas about privacy- the wonderful and terrifying interactions that occur when that privacy is broken.
WE MUST SHARE EVERYTHING runs January 26th at 8:30, January 27th and 28th at 7:00, and closes January 29th at 2pm in the Vasey Hall Studio on the second floor. Tickets are free but seating is limited. Register for your tickets today at www.shareeverything.eventbrite.com.
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