Ella N - "First Time Student Director Hopes Play Will Resonate with UNH Students"

Ella Nilsen

“First Time Student Director Hopes Play Will Resonate with UNH Students”

9/26/11

It’s 8 o’clock on a rainy, humid Thursday night at the University of New Hampshire.  Paul Creative Arts Center is mostly empty, save for Room M118, where actors are rehearsing for the upcoming Mask and Dagger production of “Rabbit Hole.”  Inside the classroom, amidst scattered desks and chairs, Jess Emerson gathers her four actors around her.

            “Focus on the things you’ve learned in the past few days and use them,” she says, before sending them off to separate sides of the room.  Two students sit off to the sidelines and wait for their scene to start.  The remaining actors, Kahley MacLeod and Amanda DeMarco, settle around a table and begin the scene.  Their characters are sisters at odds and uncomfortable with each other.  The atmosphere in the room changes rapidly and tension builds.  DeMarco animatedly narrates a bar fight her character, Izzy, gets involved in as Macleod, her older sister sits listening, silent and angry.  DeMarco caps off her story with a wild punch in the air, yelling, “…then, BOOM!  I hit her!” as MacLeod eyes her with apprehension.

            “Okay,” Emerson says, “I’m going to stop you guys there.  Let’s go back to the beginning of Izzy’s line and start again.”

            First time director student director Emerson is currently overseeing the fall production of “Rabbit Hole.”  The first and only Mask and Dagger production during the fall semester, “Rabbit Hole” is a drama with a small cast.  The story of this award-winning play revolves around middle-aged couple Becca and Howie, whose young child is accidentally run over and killed by a seventeen-year-old driver.  The play follows the couple and their family through the grieving process.  The play especially focuses on the character of Becca, who pushes her family and husband away as she copes with her son’s death.

            For Emerson, a theatre major and actor herself, directing a show is something completely new.  “I was terrified at first,” she said, “and now, I just kind of fall into it.”  Her only previous experience with directing was in class, and this is completely different.  “In directing, David Kaye just challenges you in every possible way, and you have to go through a scene and find every tiny little nuance.  With your own piece, you don’t need to follow the same rules,” she says.  “You can find your own way of getting into people’s heads and figuring this artistic genre out in your own style.”

            How are her actors responding to guidance from a fellow student?  “It’s different working with a student director because there’s less pressure to be excellent and less formality a lot of the time,” said Amanda DeMarco, who plays the character of Izzy.  Nevertheless, DeMarco says, “Jess is pushing me to explore the character in ways I would never think of.” 

Actors interviewed said that the intimacy of working with such a small cast and a student director has truly made the rehearsal process unique.  “Acting is really dependent on the people you work with,” says MacLeod, “and I really got lucky with ‘Rabbit Hole.’  I trust them completely.”

For Emerson, the message of “Rabbit Hole” is very translatable to college students.  “As the year goes on, and the weather gets colder, and the classes get harder,” she says, “everything about me gets more and more down and there’s less hope that the year is ever going to end, or that this paper is ever going to end.”  The play, she says, is ultimately about finding hope, and more importantly, finding support in other people.  “The biggest message of the play for me is…you can’t walk alone in this world,” Emerson says.  “I want people to reach out if they are having problems.  That’s Becca’s biggest problem, that she hasn’t reached out until the end.”