'Poison, Poets and Other Wonders' opens Wednesday

Against their masters' wishes, two servants open a vessel filled with sugar, and Pandora-like pandemonium ensues; an acting company uses their wits and words to trick the Governor which inevitably backfires; and young and old intertwine when poets meet under the moonlight and share a fatal kiss.

These three stories come together as one in the ISU Department of Theater's production, "Poison, Poets and Other Wonders," three adaptations of theater classics written and directed by Arthur Feinsod, the department chair.

"Masks force them to do full-body acting," Feinsod said. "To transform the figure into what their mask is asking their body to do is an art."

Feinsod said the play was designed to give students in an advanced mask acting course a chance to work with the prop itself. The students were physically exhausted after performances, he said.

"They have to be in great physical shape," Feinsod said.

Stretching and exercising were among the warm-ups for the play, leaving the students out of breath and sometimes, like Feinsod's teaching assistant and junior theater major Andrew Todd, with bruises.

"To speak with every inch of your body takes so much more than meets the eye," said Constance Johnson, junior theater major. "A person can have tiny gestures and hardly move, but it is so different from their everyday movement that it causes intense pain and stress on their bones and joints. To be able to fully commit to a character requires being in good shape."

The physical portion of the plays moved in synch with the mood and message of the plays themselves.

"Each person's portrayal of a character will be totally different when they put on a given mask," Johnson said. "The character that forms when an actor puts on a mask is entirely organic. This makes taking inspiration from elsewhere impossible."

The first two plays are comedies, one a physical and the other a satire. Feinsod wrote the last play as a poem, and the resulting piece is more somber and pensive.

"I wrote the plays knowing the students were going to do it," Feinsod said. "I was constructing the characters around the students. I knew what direction they would go in and I could train them to fit the roles."

In the first play, "Delectable Poison," the actors used physical comedy combined with fast-paced speaking to engage and lead the story. The characters acknowledge and engage the audience, drawing it into every crash, thump and squeal.

The play, Feinsod said, was adapted from a Japanese Kyogen into an Italian Renaissance play. It was the art of deciding how to reshape and breathe new life into the stories that inspired Feinsod, he said.

"I love all three plays for different reasons," Feinsod said.

The second play, "Pageant of Wonders," was originally a Spanish satire by Miguel de Cervantes. Johnson played Monedas Peligrosa, who helped orchestrate the trickery against her better judgment.

"Monedas … is great because she is business oriented, but also theatrical," Johnson said, "and her multi-faceted personality is exciting to portray. Vito and Monedas both have to interact with masked actors showing a contrast between realistic acting and mask acting in the same show."

Justin Renner, a junior theater major, played Reynoldo the Mandolin player, a character inspired by Renner's own talent with the Mandolin.

Eli Van Sickel, a sophomore theater major, was sound designer and wrote the mandolin music featured in the production, he said.

Feinsod said it was a group effort, with Sherri McFadden creating the costumes and Linda Janosko designing the masks.

The third play, "Park Poets," was based on a Japanese poem. Feinsod reshaped the poem, basing it on Ezra Pound and one of his lovers. The story is dark, romantic and nostalgic.

To prepare for the production, training started at the very beginning of the semester with students learning full-body acting before even using a mask, Feinsod said.

"We learned about psychological gestures, energy spheres and learned how to use every inch of our body to express what we feel," Johnson said. "Then we picked up the masks."

After two months of training, students were able to use plain white masks to practice with. These masks were intended to give a feel for the characters but were not the fully decorated props used in the production.

"Using masks is like a whole other world," Johnson said. "You put the mask on, look in a mirror and transform. Your walk changes, your voice changes, your gestures change. It is best to put your actual face in a similar contorted way as the mask itself, so you always have a sense of what that character is like without the mirror."

The masks sometimes rest on the upper lip. Therefore, students must try to stay in character, maintain a physically dynamic portrayal and concentrate on their enunciation, Feinsod said.

"This is a much harder form of acting than the typical realistic acting," Johnson said. "With a mask you must show that feeling through every fiber of your being to help the audience understand what you're portraying. It is a much more fulfilling way of acting, but indeed a much harder one."