Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Drama Jumps Into the Deep End

CLAIRE SOISSON/THE HOYA Shannon Walsh (Col ’15), left, and Amanda Weise (Col ’16), right, take on challenging and provoking roles in Nomadic Theatre’s latest production, which is taking place in a townhouse on 37th Street.
CLAIRE SOISSON/THE HOYA
Shannon Walsh (Col ’15), left, and Amanda Weise (Col ’16), right, take on challenging and provoking roles in Nomadic Theatre’s latest production, which is taking place in a townhouse on 37th Street.

“Pool (no water)” is a contemporary play by Mark Ravenhill about a tight knit group of artists struggling with issues of creative jealousy, guilt and addiction, currently being performed by Nomadic Theatre. The production takes place in a townhouse living room on 37th Street that can only hold an audience of 11 members per night. The room contains a singular couch and a dresser, while benches wrap around the downstage area for the audience. The fourth wall comes down for this production, and as an audience member you feel as exposed to the actors as they are to you. You cannot hide your face in the darkness of a large theater, but instead you are forced look directly into the actors’ eyes and try to remain composed through the onslaught of heavy material.

This was no small endeavor for the creative team of producer Jack Cassou (COL ’15) and director Hannah Hauer-King (COL ’14) who are both more used to the traditional theater setting.

“It’s really been untraditional from the get-go,” said Cassou, “we picked the script before we picked the site and the site was kind of an ongoing process. After months of search we found this townhouse through the university.”

The production staff had originally planned for a house with space for 40 to 50 audience members, so they were forced to add six additional previews to their already busy dress rehearsal schedule to mitigate the 11-person audience.

The Ravenhill script is rather unconventional in the fact that it is written as one large chunk of text with no set characters. The director is given license to divide up the lines as he or she wishes, meaning that no two productions of “pool (no water)” will be exactly alike. Hauer-King opted for six cast members as the friends in “The Group” and had one of these six shift slowly into the role of the seventh character they are telling the story about.

“I was really interested in this idea of ‘The Group’ and creating this group. I was trying to find the voices in this script and when I went into callbacks I tried a variation with six and it just flowed… I started identifying personalities and that sense of six became really clear,” said Hauer-King.

As the production went on, there was a spectrum of emotion and diction among the actors. On one end there were “the performer” types who have a legato and sultry speech pattern and an affinity for trying to evoke some philosophical reaction from the audience. On the other end were “the conversationalists,” the ones that made you feel like you were sitting with a close friend who tells you the vulnerable secrets behind their stories. Greyson Ulman (COL ’16) was the consummate performer on the first side of the spectrum. He rarely seemed to be speaking to anybody but rather speaking at the audience and his fellow cast members. His long drawl was reminiscent of his most recent role as The Tragedian in “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” one of those characters that says crude things to makes others uncomfortable, just to watch them squirm and then smirk at their reactions, Characters on the conversationalist end could be easy to overlook, given the fact that they rarely have artistic and heavy monologues, but they are necessary to offset and balance the equally important “performer” types.

Nick Phelan (SFS ’16) played a crucial role in grounding the show in that sense. That is to say that the performance could have been potentially over-acted or dramatic for the sake of being dramatic if there were no actors resuming a more conversational role. Phelan never said anything too matter-of-factly and, during his moment of vulnerability, he was curled up on the couch expressing his insecurities about being an accepted member of the group.

“That was a really interesting difference. Usually when people are in shows they have to use their theater voice but if you’re just in a room with a bunch of people, I can talk like I’m talking right now and people will understand me and it’s an entirely different style of acting,” Phelan said.

This is an important balance to strike as it shows how, even in a group of carefree bohemian artists, there is still someone who fought their way into the group to be “cool enough” and that person is the one who will be questioning just how far they’d go for their art and for these friendships.

Ben Prout (COL ’15) portrayed a character in the middle of these two extremes of the dramatic spectrum. He was passionate when the moment called for it and allowed the words to speak for themselves when an inflection was unnecessary. Shannon Walsh (COL ’15) arguably had the most difficult job of the six and pulled off a similar performance. Walsh was the actress that had to slowly transition into embodying the seventh character, who flows in and out of the script due to her hospitalization. Walsh pulls this off fantastically. She is wholly believable, delicate with her words and intelligently portrays vanity and resentment at the same time. Hauer-King toyed with the idea of using a doll or an inanimate object to represent the seventh member, who Hauer-King calls Eve for simplicity.

“We had the idea of having someone who felt very comfortable with her slowly becoming her or putting her on. I slowly start to embody her, and as I do that more and more I start becoming her,” said Walsh.

The production as a whole was an ambitious venture. It is the first site-specific show that Nomadic Theatre has done in many years, the script had no firm structure and the subject matter was heavier than we typically see in Georgetown theater. This was a difficult undertaking and Hauer-King did an excellent job given the time constraint. Hauer-King made many stunning directing choices involving flashlights and the way in which certain lines were echoed. She also created a safe and mutually beneficial rehearsal room, which is crucial for a project like this.

“This process working with Hannah has been a gift. We really formed, between the director and the cast, a really cohesive family,” said Amanda Weiss (COL ’16). Phelan feels similarly about the character development process, saying, “Hannah developed these characters after we had been cast so she made them with us in mind, so there’s a lot of us in them.”

It would be interesting to see how the show could have developed if they had used more of the house, as it may have then taken on a quality of the famous site-specific show “Sleep No More,” although that might have added another dimension of difficulty and perhaps unnecessary complexity.

In terms of how the house was used visually, the set design by Sasha Elkin (COL ’14) was spectacular. Everything from the contoured figure drawings on the wall, many done by Elkin herself, to the candles in empty wine bottles were well thought out and well-executed.

If you can find a ticket or luck into a standby spot, this is a production that is absolutely worth your time and the countless hours you’ll spend thinking about it afterwards.

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