The UW theatre and performance program will put on the Upstart festival, a judged one-act play festival that is student written and directed. The festival will take place from March 19-22 at the Theatre of the Arts in the Modern Languages building. Five senior undergraduate students from UW’s theatre and performance program comprise the core creative team for the Upstart project. The three shows that make up the festival are Utopia, The Waiting Room, and Hell Weeks.
Utopia is written by Joshua Barroso and directed by Hanna Freitas. The show is set in the idyllic neighbourhood of Utopia, where the couple Charlotte and Beatty host a welcome dinner for Mary. Mary is a recent divorcee who has just moved next door. During dinner one evening, Mary starts to question whether something is wrong in her utopia. The theme of this show is control versus freedom, which is demonstrated by how the characters assert their own autonomy. Freitas expressed how utopia is meant to be like a perfect or ideal world. When asked about how the themes are reflected in the characters’ interactions, Freitas said, “I think what’s really interesting is that each of the characters come into Utopia believing that they’re doing something right for themselves so that they’re doing something right by another person, and then they try and exact those themes in all of their interactions. So they’re constantly trying to like, establish their own autonomy, whereas other ones are trying to establish control over others and feeling like controlling others is the way to create that perfect world.”
How exactly does Utopia challenge the concept of a perfect community? Freitas said that every person has a different view of a perfect world. She stated, “So if they’re both existing and what is theoretically supposed to be perfect, it’s not actually possible for either of them at all. So it is kind of like a far away thing that is not part of something that’s ever actually attainable or even fully able to be conceptualized.” When asked about Freitas’ inspiration for the show, she said, “There was a lot of inspiration from the style of like ‘80s sitcoms and hell and religious imagery, like Dante’s Inferno. The writers talked a lot about how, like the story kind of takes place in Dante’s Fourth, or is inspired by the Fourth Circle of Hell.” She continued to express that other inspirations included the themes of being out of place or feeling like you’re a fish out of water.
The Waiting Room is written by Roza Taneem and directed by Jasmine Rajaballey. In a hospital waiting room, Tee, the impulsive one with the broken arm, Aamir, an emotional worrywart, and Dylan, a wealthy hopeless romantic, are forced to make choices that could permanently alter their lives. When asked about what themes the show explores, Rajaballey said, “One of the themes is the idea of feeling trapped and the way their life is going. Also exploring the concept of people being in their early 20s and the expectation that they have to have everything figured out. So we delve into that and how it affects each character.” Another theme included how privilege and socialization shape a person. According to Rajaballey, Taneem’s inspiration for the show was based on another play called No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre which also features three people being trapped together.
Hell Weeks is written by Kye Stevenson Hatayama and Talia Dmitrienko and directed by Kye Stevenson Hatayama. Olivia, a university student, receives an email from the devil containing an ultimatum that the devil established with the university: she will survive if she takes her exam, but if she fails, her soul will be taken to hell. Hatayama stated, “The moral dilemma that Olivia goes through throughout this story is ‘Do I abide by the current system imposed on me, or should I reject it and try to find a new way out of it?’” The play uses humour to address the high-pressure environment of university life. Hatayama noted that humour is a good coping mechanism for a high-stress environment. He said, “I think if you’re able to kind of detach yourself and kind of point out the absurdity of the situation you’re in, you’re able to make light of what’s at hand, it kind of makes it more palatable for humans to deal with the situation because it’s not a big deal anymore.” Hatayama’s inspiration behind the show was his personal experience with his friends from high school who are in competitive programs at UW. He said, “They’re constantly in stress, so hearing their thoughts and kind of deriving from my own thoughts on the serious academics or the hyper-competitiveness of postsecondary education I wrote this play to poke fun at it.” He was also inspired by his own experience of wanting to pursue a STEM program in university, but then realizing he was stressing himself out for something he wasn’t passionate about.
There are many steps involved in the process of creating the Upstart festival. Freitas said all the directors submitted a script for the application process. “We did like a whole application that talked about what the script was about, how we were approaching it, and the different technical requirements that we were seeing for the show,” she said. We had a presentation day, so everyone had to go and give a presentation on the show that they were submitting and like, talk about it and answer questions from the panel of people who were deciding.” She continued to mention that there was a whole process of shortlisting shows, offering feedback, and allowing them to revise before submitting. This was before it came to the final selection with assigning roles. When asked if any of the directors anticipate challenges during this process, Hatayama said, “There is the challenge of exploring and holding those emotions that are in the present in the play throughout all of the people who are working on it and seeing where the lines start and end between the show and the production process.” He also said, “It’s not just me controlling the words on a laptop, it’s kind of taking its own form when everybody’s pitching in their ideas and giving their own expertise on the project.” He expressed how that has been an interesting learning curve for him. Freitas said the biggest challenge of putting together a show like this is that so many people have so many different ideas and it can be difficult bringing it all together.
Tickets can be purchased online and cost $15 for the general public, $10 for students and seniors, and $5 for high school students.
