OnStage OnStageA Publication of the University of Dallas Drama Department v ONSTAGE The fall of 2018 has been a busy one for the Drama Table of Contents Department at the University of Dallas. We celebrated our fiftieth anniversary with over two hundred alumni 1 The Avant-Garde and the and faculty; among them were Patrick and Judy Kelly, the founders of our department. We had an afternoon Western Tradition of toasts, tours, and slideshows of past productions to 3 “Preface to Three Plays “ celebrate half a century of student theater. 4 Jungian Archetypes in The Skin of Our Teeth The University of Dallas also hosted the third biennial Dallas Shakespeare Conference in October. For us, that meant pausing The Skin of Our Teeth rehearsals for a week to 6 Perspectives from UD rehearse a staged reading of The Tempest. Our cast consisted of university students, Faculty faculty members, and professional actors from the Dallas area, and we performed to over 8 Thinking Outside the Box two hundred and fifty guests. Theater: An Interview with Director and Designers Throughout all of our events, work on The Skin of Our Teeth has been progressing steadily. The finished play is the result of the time and energy of dozens of students 11 Thornton Wilder: Transforming and professionals working in the scene shop, the costume shop, the drama department the American Stage office, the light and sound booths, and, of course, in rehearsal. Productions at University of Dallas are never an isolated event; they are woven into the classes, student life, and 13 Redemption in The Skin of Our Teeth research projects of the student body. Conversations range from the spiritual implications of Wilder’s play to the nature of art and theater, to the cyclical view of history popular in 14 Cast Interview the years after World War I. University of Dallas Drama Department There are many angles from which to approach a play such as this. It stands out because of the theatrical techniques introduced with its debut in 1942. It is distinctly American OnStage in its perspective and has become monumental in the canon of American theater. It is Volume 4 Issue 1 philosophical in nature and achieves a mythic and universal scope which approaches Biblical dimensions. Despite it epic scope, it is grounded in humor. This edition of OnStage Editor-in-Chief explores all of these aspects of The Skin of Our Teeth through comprehensive articles, Beatrice Daniels faculty perspectives, and Thornton Wilder’s own preface to the play. Layout Design Directing The Skin of Our Teeth makes me think about the founding of this department Peter Prieto over fifty years ago and how much we as a department have accomplished since then. In 1967, Professor Judy Kelly, then Judy French, directed our first play, Moliere’s The Miser. Contributing Writers Two years later, Professor Patrick Kelly directed The Skin of Our Teeth. Beatrice Daniels Katarina Morris Thornton Wilder was fascinated with the mundane details which are repeated every day Maria Rossini throughout history until they themselves take on an epic dimension. As we celebrate fifty Katherine Tweedel years, we look back on semesters of freshman taking their first class on Theater History, Katherine Weber actors meeting every night to tackle difficult scenes, and seniors stepping into the role of director as they take on their own shows. It is in these particulars that the vision of our Photography founders comes to life. Marquel Plavan See you at the theater! Cover Design Taylor Benvenutti Editing Staff Sterling Daniels -Stefan Novinski, Chair of Drama Above: Rachel Lara as Gladys. Opposite: Jackson Berkhouse Katarina Morris as Mr. Antrobus and Rachel Lara as Gladys. Rachel Guise The Avant-Garde and Western Tradition by Beatrice Daniels With the rise of Darwinism in the late nineteenth century came or simplistic, especially if the audience sought a verisimilitude an emphasis on the individual and a loss of belief in a common in its portrayal. Wilder differentiated between verisimilitude nature which extends to each individual of the species. At the (“lifelikeness”, which had dominated nineteenth century same time, art and literature emphasized the role of subjective theater) and reality, the underlying truth: it was reality he perception, leading to artistic representations of the individual sought to capture (Preface 685). By including anachronisms experience. Thornton Wilder, writing in the 1930s and 40s, rejected (chronological inconsistencies), breaking the fourth wall, and a theater limited by individual experience, instead seeking a new having a minimal set, Wilder emphasized that the theater was way to integrate details of daily life with geological time, that is, not trying to accurately depict prehistoric life but rather to to examine “those things that repeat and repeat and repeat in explore an essential reality. By breaking the fourth wall with the lives of millions” (Bryer xiv). Instead Wilder differentiated humorous disturbances from the actors, of an entertaining theater which depends Wilder reminds the audience that a play on interesting plots and other people’s between verisimilitude is inherently artificial and defuses the lives, Wilder sought to achieve a greater and reality: it was reality allegorical predictability of the play. In vision of human purpose. The form and he sought to capture. 1942 and in 2018, theatergoers come to technique in The Skin of Our Teeth emerge a play with an underlying expectation from a desire to arrive at universal experience through theater. of “how theater works;” a rupture in the normal procedure of the play forces them to respond more sincerely to what they Wilder creates a narrative of general human experience from experience. This shaking-up of our concept of art in order to the fragments of individual experience. He understood this experience it anew is called the avant-garde. “generalized experience” to be the vocation of theater (in contrast to the “unique occasion” of the novel), writing, “It is Yet much of what modern audiences consider to be avant-garde through the theater’s power to raise the exhibited individual in light of nineteenth century theater is really just casting back action into the realm of idea and type and universal that it is able to Greek and Medieval traditions. Wilder spent much of his life to evoke our belief” (Preface 685). By generalizing the action of teaching Classics; so much so that he was accused of being a the individual, Wilder reconstructs a universal understanding of Greek playwright and not an American one. Like Greek drama, the human person—that is, of what one might call human nature. The Skin of Our Teeth makes efforts to distance the play from the human actors and audience. Greek actors never pretended to be Wilder knew that presenting a play that sought universal truth the characters they portrayed. Actors wore masks to indicate who in a geological time frame could easily be presented as didactic they represented and to prevent any lapse into verisimilitude. 1 contained in the great books of his predecessors [furnish him with] adequate direction and stimulation….Do I believe this?...Is it sufficient climax for the play?....I do believe it (Journals 37). The Skin of Our Teeth examines the family in the face of societal breakdown and apocalypse. Wilder chose to abstract the situation, removing it from a specific time or place. The result is that in 2018, the play still addresses the audience in the present, immediately and directly, asking “are you going to choose to rebuild society now?” The question is as old as human catastrophe. Upon the burning of Troy, Aeneas must decide what to take and what to leave. At the foundation of Western thought lies a hard evaluation of what we must preserve and what we must allow to be lost in order to survive. Thornton Wilder carries The chorus broke into the action to reflect or comment on what on the tradition of the Western Epic, surprising the audience was happening in the play, emphasizing the illusory nature of the through new techniques so that, perhaps for the first time, we dramatic situation. can understand all that is at stake. ◊ Wilder also incorporates the use of archetype and anachronism Works Cited common in Medieval cycle and morality plays. In the twelfth- Bryer, Jackson R. “Introduction.” Conversations with Thornton Wilder. Ed. by century play “Mankind,” the character Mankind must navigate Jackson R. Bryer. University Press of Mississippi, 1992. between Mercy, Mischief, and the devils Newguise, Nowadays, Wilder, Thornton. “Preface to Three Plays.” Thornton Wilder: Collected Plays and Nought. Purposely generic and allegorical, the morality and Writings on Theater. Library Classics of the United States, 2007. play applies to every member in the audience and spans beyond Wilder, Thornton. The Journals of Thornton Wilder, 1939-1961. Ed. by Donald centuries. Medieval cycle plays were also playfully anachronistic. Gallup. Yale University Press, 1985. Shepherds awaiting the birth of Christ swear “by Our Lady” and complain about the cold winters and their unfair landlords—all problems well known to the English peasant. The effect is that Above: Nicholas Moore and Bernadette Roden. the twelfth-century play-goer can immediately place himself Below: Dolores Mihaliak as Mrs. Antrobus. in the Nativity scene. At the heart of such theatrical customs is the assumption that human nature is everywhere the same, and thus a historically accurate imitation is not necessary in order to capture the audience’s belief and sympathy. Wilder believed that his play “comes alive under conditions of crisis,” when the audience is especially able to sympathize with the crisis on stage given the suffering around them (Preface 685). He wrote at a time when world war was stripping away social conventions.