Love and Information,” by Caryl Churchill, a play comprised of unrelated vignettes, currently being shown in the Elizabethtown College Tempest Theatre.

This experimental play, first performed in Sept. 2012, intentionally includes very little detail pertaining to characters, background and stage direction.
This gives directors and performers a lot of interpretive freedom.

The Etown production, directed by Director of Theatre and Dance Michael Swanson, featured 69 vignettes, which varied in length from a few seconds to a few minutes long, making the entire play last about an hour and a half, with no intermission.

These 69 vignettes featured over 100 characters, none of which were shown in more than one scene, allowing each member of the cast to portray multiple roles.

Each vignette was introduced with a short, summarizing title. The set was minimalistic, cube-centric and monochromatic, for easy use in a wide variety of scenes.

Sophomore Emmett Ferree, a first-time actor, described preparation for such a unique production.

He explained that, since this play needs a fairly large cast, all fourteen people who auditioned got a part in the show.

“We were not given much of a description of what the play was going to be about, going into it,” Ferree recalled.

“We saw the script and we were like ‘what is this?’ There are no characters, it doesn’t tell you who says what, it just [kind of] looks like free verse poetry… We were all really confused.”

For auditions, cast members were paired together to read through scenes to give Swanson an idea of which pairs had chemistry.

Practice began with read throughs of the selected scenes. Not only did Churchill give directors a lot of freedom, Swanson gave the actors a lot of freedom as well.

“We got to have a say if we thought certain people were good for some scenes or if we wanted a scene,” Ferree explained.

“Once we got comfortable enough with the script, we started staging it and we would have to sit down and talk with whoever we were acting with in the scene and say ‘okay, who are these people and what are these scenes about,’” Ferree said.

“[Swanson] had some input and he had final say, but he let us run with it, for the most part.”

Some of the vignettes featured British dialect. Ferree explained that the entire cast got together and went through each scene to determine if a British dialect or their natural accents would be more appropriate.

Originally, all of the scenes were performed with a British dialect, since Churchill is a British playwright.

The performance only utilized British dialect for scenes that used British slang, locations and other British-specific language.

So far, the largest audience has been 51 people on the Feb. 9 showing.

A member of the audience, first-year Zach Ingersoll, went to support a friend in the cast, although says he might have gone anyway because “[he likes] to go and watch the productions; [he finds] them to be interesting.”
Ingersoll found the show, “kind of confusing. I mean some of the scenes made sense, I could pick up on what they were. But otherwise, it wasn’t very linear. It was kind of a non sequitur after another,” Ingersoll said.

“I thought it was interesting. I enjoyed watching the show.”

Another audience member, sophomore Sarah Humphrey, also enjoyed the production.

“I really liked how it’s short little vignettes because each one has a deeper story than what is presented, and you kind of have to look into that,” Humphrey said.

The show’s minimalism did not bother Humphrey because she thought it gave the audience members a chance to decide what they think is happening in each scene and fill in the blanks themselves.

However, she recognized that having to do so can be confusing or unsettling for some audience members.

“I think that it’s sometimes hard to be given ‘nothing’ and having to put things to it,” Humphrey explained. She said she thought that people who like to read and are creative would especially enjoy the show.

Ferree enthusiastically encourages any student with any level of experience who is interested in being a part of any plays put on by the College Theater to audition.

“The worst thing that happens is that they say ‘hey you’re a good actor but we don’t have a spot for you in the cast’,” Ferree explained.

“Once you even put yourself out there and audition, that in itself is an awesome experience. Just go for it.”

Students can also participate in shows without auditioning by joining the stage, make-up, costume and tech crews.

There are still showings of the College’s performance of “Love and Information” at the Tempest Theatre Feb. 14 and 15 at 8 p.m. and on Feb. 17 at 2 p.m.

Other productions at the College this semester will be the E-town New Playwright Fest VI on March 15 and 16 at 8 p.m. in Zug Recital Hall and “The Cripple of Inishmaan” on April 11, 12, 13, 25 and 26 at 8 p.m. as well April 28 at 2 p.m. in the Tempest Theatre.