Mars Harmon, Photo Editor
From Oct. 1-4, Denison students performed “God of Carnage,” a contemporary play by French playwright Yazmina Reza.
The play follows two sets of couples as they meet to discuss a playground incident. One of the couples’ children, Alan and Annette’s son, hit Michael and Veronica’s son in the face with a stick, leading to two broken teeth. They start out civil, exchanging small talk and discussing what they do for work, but eventually everything divulges into chaos.
The show was directed by Dr. Aviva Neff, an associate professor of Theatre at Denison.
“God of Carnage” is a smaller show that all takes place in the same room. This choice of show was purposeful.
“Because this play is taking place so soon in the semester, we wanted a show that was both a challenge for our students, but also a challenge within their grasp…So it’s a little bit smaller scale as far as the cast. There’s only four characters. This allowed us to cast more understudies, though, so we do have a full cast of understudies, which is a really important development step for some of our emerging actors,” said Neff.
While the show choice made sense with the short rehearsal to show time, it offered different challenges, too, one of them being blocking the show within a small area.
“So for me, it was like, ‘OK, how can I invent ways to get them up to make sure we’re not just sitting and talking at each other?’ …That kind of is a struggle as a director, because for my cast it’s just been a long day and they just want to sit and say these lines for an hour and a half and it’s like no we got to get you up. We gotta find a reason to walk across the room. I’m really proud of how we got there. So we’re going to be moving around a lot for a play set in a living room,” said Neff.
One of the main moments of movement is when Ava King, who played Veronica, is lifted over the shoulder by Alan, as she tries to chase after her husband.
“I just wanted it to be like this multi-genre pressure cooker. I’m always inspired by slapstick comedy. You know, if I’m doing a show and it’s not like a tragedy, I’m gonna throw in a slap, a literal slap. I’m gonna throw in a chase. We have a lift in this show,” said Neff.
In order to achieve this stunt Neff had colleague and fellow director Alison Moorooney to come in and choreograph it.
“I explained the lift to Alison and she was like, oh, that’s super easy…I could do that in my sleep. So absolutely true to form, she came in, and within ten minutes, the actors had it figured out,” said Neff.
“God of Carnage” had rehearsal start late August, and the performances were only four and a half weeks after that.
“[The hardest part of this production was] the lack of time…We usually need things to be resolved by the next day and sometimes that can’t happen. I think that’s been a very big challenge. It’s just like making sure we have everything done and everything is done in the very short amount of time we have together,” said Whiting Webster ‘27, who was the stage manager for the show.
The stage manager’s job is to lead the room, keep track of props, manage actors, call cues during the show and keep communication with the production team. Webster is involved in the Arts at Denison, they are a Dance fellow, as well as the president of Alpha Psi Omega, the Theatre Honors Society.
“There is one key moment in particular, and it’s that somebody gets puked on stage. So that was one of the things that when I pitched this show to colleagues who were familiar with it, they immediately said, ‘how are you going to handle the puke?’ …We worked really hard on it, and our first approach to the prop worked. …That was honestly a huge risk because well, we’ve only had about three weeks to learn this whole show and put it up,” said Neff. This is a scene where Annette, played by Maddie Moore-Barkley ‘29, throws up on her husband Alan, played by Junior Ian Wall.
“We had this costume IV bag with a long tube that goes through the actor’s costume, like in their sleeve and ends at their wrist. We had to do a lot of, like, vomit bag work with timing, or when the doctor was going to squeeze it, so then the water would come out, and also figuring out how the bag functions so that I can fill it before rehearsal,” said Webster.
The bag itself is filled with water. Neff described how this was done in order to not have to clean out any stains from the actor’s costumes.
“I really love a fun comedy. I think that this play is definitely one of those ones, but there’s a lot to talk about in terms of context and dramaturgy with the way that the characters are written and presented. But it is also a very funny show to work on because of how ridiculous these characters are,” said Webster.