{"id":103382,"date":"2016-10-03T11:01:32","date_gmt":"2016-10-03T15:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=103382"},"modified":"2016-10-06T12:09:19","modified_gmt":"2016-10-06T16:09:19","slug":"103382","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2016\/10\/03\/103382\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&A: Director Sally Wood discusses the Bates theater opener, ‘Tomorrow in the Battle’"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\n\t
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Jennifer (Sukanya Shukla '20), who is having an affair with Simon (Brennen Malone '17), are at a pivotal moment in Tomorrow in the Battle<\/em>. (Phyllis Graber Jensen) <\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

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Tomorrow in the Battle<\/em> uses the standard-issue plot engine, the love triangle, in surprising ways to explore decision, power, and desire. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

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The cast of the Bates mainstage play Tomorrow in the Battle<\/em> comprises Brennen Malone '17 of Philadelphia, Sukanya Shukla '20 of Gwalior, India, and Christina Felonis '17 of Athens, Greece. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

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The character of Simon, played by Brennen Malone '17, is a world-famous heart surgeon in the play Tomorrow in the Battle<\/em>. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

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In Tomorrow in the Battle<\/em>, Anna (Christina Felonis '17) has an important job in the Ministry of Defense and is married to Simon (Brennen Malone '17). (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t

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An acclaimed and unusual play based on a standard-issue plot engine, the love triangle, opens the mainstage theater season at Bates on Oct. 6.<\/p>\n

Visiting Assistant Professor of Theater Sally Wood directs a cast of three in Kieron Barry’s Tomorrow in the Battle<\/em> \u2014 a play that uses surprising dramatic means to explore decision, power, and desire, and how those human energies break the walls between what’s public and what’s private.<\/p>\n

In the Bates production<\/a>, the character of Anna is played by Christina Felonis \u201917 of Athens, Greece; Simon is played by Brennen Malone \u201917 of Philadelphia; and Sukanya Shukla \u201920 of Gwalior, India, is Jennifer.<\/p>\n

Here’s what Wood has to say about Tomorrow in the Battle.<\/em><\/p>\n

Who’s the threesome in this love triangle?<\/h5>\n

It\u2019s your typical triangle \u2014 a husband, a wife, and a mistress. Simon, the husband, is a world-famous heart surgeon. So he\u2019s got this incredible career going for him. His wife, Anna, works for the Ministry of Defence in England in a very important, quite consequential job. And Jennifer, who becomes the mistress, is basically the public face of a financial firm.<\/p>\n

Where does the playwright take the standard love triangle setup?<\/h5>\n

I\u2019ve never been around a play like this: The characters speak almost exclusively in monologue to the audience. So it\u2019s like you have these three projectiles that cross paths. On paper, you’d think it would never work. But their stories are so compelling that it draws you in.<\/p>\n

On a deeper level, what’s the play about?<\/h5>\n

Chance. There are a lot of chance meetings \u2014 “Anna was delayed, which is why I went to the opera alone, that\u2019s where I met Jennifer.” And through those, people make choices.<\/p>\n

At different points in the play each character makes a simple decision that escalates into something much, much, much larger. Those choices balloon up \u2014 you know, not just impacting their own lives but impacting the lives of 30,000 people or perhaps the world at large.<\/p>\n

What makes the play and this production a good learning experience for the student actors?<\/h5>\n

For one thing, it’s such a tight production schedule, I\u2019m asking so much of them so quickly. The beauty of that is that you have to jump on your first instinct. That forces them to be bold, forces them to just trust that whatever they\u2019ve got is enough. Sometimes, if we wait for the perfect moment we\u2019ll spend our whole lives trying to get there.<\/p>\n

\"Discussing<\/a>

Director Sally Wood (right) discusses a creative point with costume designer Carol Farrell and set and lighting designer Michael Reidy. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Two of the students knew this summer that they would be doing this play. For Brennen, this play is a thesis project, and for Christina it\u2019s preparation for thesis next semester. They had about five of their monologues memorized coming in.<\/p>\n

But Sukanya, who is amazing, is a first-year who got cast the first day of classes. For her it was like, \u201cWelcome to Bates, here\u2019s your script and let\u2019s get going.\u201d And it\u2019s been wonderful seeing her just jump in.<\/p>\n

The play is intended for an adult audience. How do you guide young actors in conveying these themes?<\/h5>\n

I feel that we all have the capacity to understand pretty much any situation. True, the freshman coming in may not have had an extramarital affair, you know. But we\u2019ve all had questionable moments in our lives when we didn\u2019t do the right thing or we would have made a different decision.<\/p>\n

Monologues, I tell my students all the time, are the hardest thing to do in theater.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s just telling the students, \u201cLook, things don\u2019t actually change all that much as we get older. Maybe the consequences get larger, so we become more responsible for those initial choices that we make.\u201d<\/p>\n

And they\u2019re very much into the politics of the play itself. It\u2019s really fun watching them have to advocate for their characters.<\/p>\n

What are the challenges and gratifications of directing Tomorrow in the Battle<\/em>?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The biggest challenge is that it\u2019s three monologues, basically, and that\u2019s really difficult. Monologues, I tell my students all the time, are the hardest thing to do in theater, because it\u2019s just you out there. You have to form a relationship with the audience.<\/p>\n

As for gratifications: We had a great rehearsal last night where things really started to pop. And I could see the light bulbs going off, including in my own head \u2014 I was like, \u201cOh, yes, yes, yes. Okay, now I see the path.” Which is always an exciting moment \u2014 because you don\u2019t know if the light bulbs are actually going to go off sometimes. So it\u2019s comforting when they do.<\/p>\n

Why should someone come see this play?<\/h5>\n

People should come and see all theater. But I think that this play will surprise them \u2014 it will absolutely get them to think about life and their own lives in a different way. I find myself implicated in this play, because I go back and think about choices that I’ve made or I\u2019m going to make. And if a play can do that, that\u2019s remarkable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The play is about how chance creates choice, says Wood. “Each character makes a simple decision that escalates into something much, much, much larger.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":103505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,11010,133,11009],"tags":[11108,71],"class_list":["post-103382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-arts","category-creativity","category-the-college","tag-sally-wood","tag-theater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103382"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103511,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103382\/revisions\/103511"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}