Students read original plays to gain feedback from audience Thursday

Thursday evening, students and faculty became intertwined in the reading of an adapted play of "Alice and Wonderland," among other plays to be chosen for the New Play Festival in the spring.

Eli Van Sickel, a sophomore theater major, said he has written plays before but had not participated in any activity like the play readings.

He said the purpose of the event was to provide the advanced play writing class feedback on the plays they have been working on over the course of the semester.

"There will be four plays chosen to be performed next semester," he said.

Ani Cohen, a freshman theater major who recently was in ISU's adapted production of "Romeo and Juliet," had her play "Trippin" read aloud Thursday evening by people in the theater department.

Cohen said "Alice and Wonderland" inspired her to write her play.

The plays characters' names are Drugs, Alcohol, Sex, Abuse and Deceit.

The play opens with the characters being tempted by Drugs to take pills that send them into a psychedelic dream for two hours.

Each character went through a drugged state with premonitions of what life would be like if the habits continued.

When each character realized the habit was wrong, it vanished until only Deceit remained.

Each character had a problem with deceit at its core, Cohen said.

Deceit was trapped when the play ended.

Julie Dixon, associate professor of theater, wrote one of the plays read Thursday evening.

Her play, titled "A Piece of Cake and Howard Sherman," depicted a cake tempting the other characters to eat him.

Ben Fulk, a sophomore theater major, is one of eight students in the New Play Readings that will be judged for the play's eligibility to be performed next semester in the New Play Festival.

Fulk wrote the play "Eighty-8-eighty" about a mentally challenged individual with no sense of time who is trying to figure out his dreams about the death of his mother.

"It was fun," Fulk said, he enjoyed working on his play because it ventured away from his normal writing range.

Fulk will have his play read Friday, he said. "I look forward to the feedback," Fulk said.

( Paula Lowry is a senior political science major. She can be reached at sascamed@isugw.indstate.edu.)