Ithaca College’s stage productions have worked with other external performance spaces in the past, but never before has Ithaca College joined forces with the Hangar Theatre, nor have two large-scale student productions shared a performance space over two weeks as they did with the productions of “Stupid F##king Bird” and “Fever/Dream.” From Oct. 24 through Nov. 3, these two comedic drama adaptations were in rotating repertory at the Hangar Theatre.
Directed by Marc Gomes, associate professor in the Department of Theatre Arts, “Stupid F##king Bird” opened Oct. 24 at the Hangar. The play is a loose adaptation of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull.” “Stupid F##king Bird” is a play-within-a-play-within-a-play about love, life, yearning and challenging the traditional forms of 19th-century theater. The show has both matinee and evening performances and it will close Nov. 2.
“Fever/Dream,” directed by professor Cynthia Henderson, is based on “Life is a Dream,” a 1636 play by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. “Fever/Dream” is a satirical telling of a man’s rise from a customer service role to a CEO in corporate America. This play opened Oct. 25 and will close Nov. 3.
Last year, Gomes and Amanda Spooner, assistant professor in the Department of Theatre Production and Management, were co–chairs for the Production Laboratory Planning Committee. This committe is responsible for curating each season of shows. The PLPC gave Gomes and Spooner the genre of comedic adaptations of classics as their guiding principle for the season. Although the decision was not solely up to Spooner and Gomes, the two did come into the committee with a specific passion for these two plays and presented them to Henderson and the rest of the committee.
Gomes said the vision for this season always included a collaboration with the Hangar since the CTD did a co-production of “The Liar” with the Kitchen Theatre in April.
“In the last couple of years, the Center for Theatre and Dance has been building bridges with the professi
onal theater in Ithaca to have students experience [outside] theater … and build new kinds of audiences [for them to also] connect with Ithaca broadly,” Gomes said.
Bethany Schiller, management associate at the Hangar, said she has seen an increase in the amount of external programming and events since she started as an usher in 2017.
“This new arrangement is really exciting for us, especially because we value our partnership with Ithaca College,” Schiller said. “We benefit a lot from that relationship in our own season. We work with and hire for the season a range of directors, designers, performers, teaching artists and front of house. It’s a really valuable relationship and partnership, and we’re excited to deepen and expand that.”
An element of this season’s selection that was not always in the cards for Gomes and Spooner, however, was the doubling in size of the stage management and acting classes who needed credits. This led to the need to run both “Stupid F##king Bird” and “Fever/Dream” in the same week at the same venue.
The two main stage productions are part of the studio slot for McCarroll Theatre for the CTD. The productions are considered “unsupported,” meaning that other than the stage management crew who were students assigned to the production, design staff is not assigned. For this type of production, the directors are given the challenging opportunity of outsourcing their design staff, a process that can take months.
The CTD productions also serve as required rehearsal and performance courses for BFA acting and musical theater students. Non-performance majors in the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance, in addition to the entire student body, can audition for a main-stage production and get credit if applicable.
Gomes said this year, there were more juniors and seniors that needed main stage production credits to graduate because of students who could not do performances during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gomes and his team were tasked with building a season to accommodate enough assignments for the stage managers and performance students who needed them. Having rotating repertory shows was the solution.
Gomes said he had high expectations for “Stupid F##king Bird” although the particular challenges were greater than they usually are given the circumstances. Main stage productions typically get six nights to rehearse in-venue before opening night. This meant both plays had to split that time in half, so each production only had one complete run–through with all props, tech and lighting prior to opening night.
“When a play is under rehearsed, time is the only thing that you can’t ever replace, and we need time to groove what we’re doing, to have the actors have the confidence in what they’re doing time and time again,” Gomes said. “And when those things are cut short, it’s difficult. So the feeling that we wouldn’t get to what we wanted to get to wasn’t there. It’s just that we didn’t have the time. But in fact, we did, but we let the audience tell us what they experienced.”
Ellie Berry, senior stage management major and production stage manager of “Stupid F##king Bird,”
said the experience of working in tandem with “Fever/Dream” at a new performance space posed an interesting challenge. Since the two productions cohabitate the same theater, the crews shared light and sound equipment. While it took some time for both productions to adjust, Berry said she thinks both cast and crews ended up satisfied with the first week of productions..
“It went a lot smoother than I think we were expecting it to, which was so lovely, and all of our designers and casts were so flexible,” Berry said. “I really appreciate that these actors did have a chance to perform on a stage that’s not just one of our Dillingham stages. I think that gave them a really unique perspective and experience for when they graduate and go on and move to other spaces.”
Senior acting major Aren Duffy, who played Segis Basil in “Fever/Dream,” shared the same opinion about the depth of the Hangar’s studio, as well as the lighting and design struggles, making a significant impact on the rehearsal process.
“We leaned on each other a lot,” Duffy said. “Everyone on both teams had the confidence and was super passionate about these shows. [We] wanted to get them up in time, but also do them in the right way and not cut corners just because we were not operating on a normal schedule.”
Senior acting major Jasmine Williams, who played Emma in “Stupid F##king Bird,” said the biggest focus throughout the rehearsal process was learning how to be adaptable.
“The first day we were in the space, I was extremely frustrated, because we had this very deeply intimate play, and I felt that in the studio space [at the college], we were so close that we were able to pick up on the intricacies of each other’s choices and feed off of those,” Williams said. “And when we entered [the Hangar] it felt like a cavernous space. But I am very lucky to be a part of a cast that knows how to rise to the occasion.”
