Shaye Phillips, Features Editor–
Bathed in a sea of light, the stage floor of Sharon Martin Hall is replaced by fake white and gray marble tiles. A coral pink lobby desk covered with various office materials serves as the centerpiece of the set. Two fake trees and a wooden coffee table are situated upstage to create a pretend waiting area. Joyful chatter ricochets off the walls of the theater as the student actors review their lines, laughing, and genuinely enjoying each other’s company.
These actors are preparing for their upcoming rehearsal. One of their last rehearsals before opening night.
This month, Denison presents “Lobby Hero,” written by playwright Kenneth Logernan. The show mixes racial inequity in the American justice system with those who work in the law enforcement. There are four main characters: Jeff, a young, down-on-his-luck, security guard who works for an apartment complex in Manhattan; William, Jeff’s serious supervisor who also works as a night guard; Bill, a renowned police officer and his newly appointed, young, rookie partner, Dawn. Interactions between these characters are both comedic and dramatic as they become entangled with a moral dilemma within the lobby of the apartment complex. This dilemma tests the trust of the characters, and brings up themes of corruption and bias.
“Kenneth Logernan is probably one of the better, realist playwrights out there,” said Jim Dennen, the director for Lobby Hero. “And so it’s just an opportunity to work on a really focused, well written, realist play.”
Dennen has been working as a director and professor at Denison since 2017. He expressed his interest for the play and the intricate social nuances between the time it was written and present day. The play tackles various subjects such as racial inequity in the criminal justice system, gender misconduct, and corruption within the police force. “Lobby Hero’ was written prior to George Floyd, and the Black Lives Matter and Me Too Movements.
“There are social issues informing the play that are still every bit as important and present today. Were the play written now, those issues would be talked about in very different ways,” said Jim.
Dennen describes “Lobby Hero” as an “anachronism,” meaning that it’s a little outdated, but what he and the actors are trying to accomplish is to take the anachronistic quality to make the play intriguing as a historical drama.
“I think to know it was written then makes it interesting, because we’re getting to see not just how times have changed, but how writing has changed,” Dennen said.
However, performing a play with four characters comes with an armload of challenges. There are 79 pages of raw dialogue that is split up fairly evenly among the four actors performing.
The actress portraying Dawn, Ava King ‘27, shares her experience with memorizing the script and how remembering it is not really the hardest part.
“Memorization to me is the least important part of the acting process cause once we’ve picked apart the script I’ve found I’ve come to understand the play very well,” King said.
Contrastly, one of the actors, Nhien Hong ‘26, who is understudying for Henry Bailey ‘26 in the role of Jeff, touched on his struggles with the work put into rehearsing.
“It’s requiring the best of me. My day starts at eight o’clock and ends at 12, sometimes later. You have to put in a lot of work outside of rehearsals, because rehearsals are only for showing off the work you’ve done and going over minor details. Most of the practice and reviewing lines is done by yourself or with the other actors,” Nhien said.
As someone who is not a theatre major and has not done many large productions, Hong feels that “Lobby Hero” is one of the most challenging projects he’s done at Denison. However, he is grateful for the opportunity to perform and he holds a lot of respect for his fellow actors.
“Seeing Henry perform as Jeff, you wouldn’t believe this is the first play he’s doing on campus. All in all everybody works hard and it also pushes me to work hard too,” Nhien said.
King explained that the long rehearsals are a small price to pay for the relationships you get to build with the cast.
“We literally practice 24 hours a week, but I feel like it’s rewarding cause of the intimacy of the cast. We get a lot of one on one time with the director, cast members and the stage director,” King said.
What is particularly notable about Denison’s production of “Lobby Hero” is the greater inclusion of the understudy cast. Most understudies are only there to fill in for a main cast member if they get sick, or for some other reason, can not perform. For this production, Dennen hopes to try something new by allowing the understudy actors to put on a special performance of the entire play.
“Our mission in the Theatre Department is, of course, to create as many opportunities [for student actors] as we can. So we figured out a way to do a smaller, more focused play and give two sets of four actors the opportunity to perform,” Jim said.
Several of the actors are grateful for this and express their appreciation for the memories they have made at rehearsals.
“I would describe it as very fun and very difficult,” said Andrew Angulo ‘25, the understudy for the role of William. “I really like the final scene and performing it over and over and over again. Not to spoil too much, it’s a confrontation scene that’s really exciting.”
“I think [the play] does a really good job at establishing a fly on the wall relationship with the audience. Overall, it’s a challenge to work with but a very fulfilling challenge,” Ryan Becherer ‘26, who plays Bill.
“The audience will be entertained, but they might find the play to be very complex. They’ll be left with a lot to think about and will be shocked at all that happens in four scenes,” said Robyn Taylor ‘26, the understudy for Ava, for the character Dawn.
The opening night is 7 p.m. Oct. 10, in Sharon Martin Hall inside the Michael D. Eisner Center for the Performing Arts.
There will be five shows afterwards, with the show on Oct. 14 featuring the understudy cast.
All shows will be at 7 p.m. except for the show on Oct. 12, which begins at p.m. and the show on Oct.13, which begins at 2 p.m.
“If you want to experience the story in multiple portrayals you should go to both the main play and the understudy play,” Hong said, smiling as he waited on the sidelines during rehearsal.
“Go to both and be a part of history.”