{"id":172351,"date":"2026-03-26T15:45:44","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T19:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=172351"},"modified":"2026-03-27T15:58:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T19:58:00","slug":"a-15th-century-play-reimagined-for-the-21st-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2026\/03\/26\/a-15th-century-play-reimagined-for-the-21st-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyone is a star in ‘Everybody’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Bates Theater\u2019s production of Everybody<\/em> sold out every performance at Gannett Theater last week \u2014 waitlists at the door, eager audience members finding out they\u2019d gotten seats  five minutes before curtain \u2014 and the room earned that anticipatory urgency. Associate Professor of  Theater Courtney Smith, the scenic and projections designer, built a world that wrapped around you rather than played in front of you. It was immersive and a little disorienting, in exactly the right way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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All photography by Sammy Weidenthal \u201927 for Bates College<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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Branden Jacobs-Jenkins\u2019 2017 play, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, takes a risky leap of faith in inviting its cast into a game of role swapping. Before each performance, the cast members playing \u201cSomebody\u201d draw lots to decide who plays Friendship, Cousin, Kinship, Stuff, Everybody. The Bates production also added a few other roles to the lottery, Strength, Beauty, Mind and Senses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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All these different roles, memorized by everyone and shared by the whole cast, could lead to dozens of different possible versions in any given production. The performance you witnessed would have been the only time it happened exactly that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"People<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Director and Associate Professor of Theater Tim Dugan shaped an ensemble that held that strangeness without flinching. For Adam Joseph (AJ) Matos \u201926 of Springfield, N.J., and Noah Skinner ’26 of Sugar Land, Texas, the play was part of their senior theses, working with a cast that had to be ready for anything. As lighting designer, Skinner lit a world that had to feel ancient and urgent at once. There were many big questions on hand, including the nightly guessing game of who would play who? The answer? Everybody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The cast includes: Mo Al-Jabry \u201928, Graham Austin \u201928, Aidan Bergeron \u201927, Julian Boutin \u201928, Jack Fisher \u201929, Connor Gerraughty \u201926, Josie Kim \u201927, Jenny Liu \u201929, Emily Maffezzoli \u201929, Samantha Manogue \u201926, Ruby Marden \u201927, AJ Matos \u201926, and Patrick Stronski \u201927.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following were also involved in the production: Costume Designer & Director \u2014 Rebecca Armstrong; Associate Costume Designer \u2014 Marcel Nagy \u201928; Sound Designer \u2014 Emily Duncan Wilson (Brandow Family Fund Guest Artist); Associate Directors \u2014 Kate Norry \u201928, Nicole Rossilli \u201927, Elaine Wang \u201927; Stage Manager \u2014 Sarah McOsker \u201928; Associate Stage Managers \u2014 Queenie Tsang \u201928, Colin Kenny \u201928; and Associate Projections Designer \u2014 Evan Cox \u201926. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bates Theater\u2019s production of ‘Everybody’ sold out every performance at Gannett Theater last week \u2014 waitlists at the door, eager audience members finding out they\u2019d gotten seats five minutes before curtain \u2014 and the room earned that anticipatory urgency. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1917,"featured_media":172375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":["timothy-j-dugan-jr","courtney-p-smith"],"_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":[11010,1,133],"tags":[6889,71,8661],"class_list":["post-172351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-batesnews","category-creativity","tag-performing-and-visual-arts","tag-theater","tag-theater-at-bates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172351","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\/1917"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172351"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":172439,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172351\/revisions\/172439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}