By Alexandra Alarcon
After working for several months on their senior directing concentration, three UC Santa Barbara students premiered their plays at the Theater Department’s Fall One Acts production last weekend.
The three seniors in the directing concentration began preparing for the Fall One Acts this past summer. Alex Guaydacan, Linyi Chen, and Queenie Yang each proposed a play that they wanted to individually direct. After getting their play approved, the senior directors selected a cast of fellow UCSB student actors and began the directing process.
In a recent interview just days before the performance, Guaydacan, a fourth-year UCSB student majoring in Theater reflected on his experience in the directing concentration and for the Fall One Acts.
Q: What play did you choose to direct?
A: The play is called “The Incident Report.” It's an interrogation-style play about two men who are being interrogated for killing another man on a plane after he attacked a flight attendant while he was drunk. It's a female interrogator interrogating these two men. And so, there's a bit of a power dynamic there. It's also kind of a morally ambiguous piece of figuring out, you know, what was right, what was wrong? If he really deserved to die?
Photo by Laura Parker
A dispute breaks out between the characters during the interrogation in the play “The Incident Report,” directed by UCSB student Alex Guaydacan, a senior in UCSB Theater’s directing concentration. It was staged last weekend in Fall One Acts.
Q: What has been special about this directing process?
A: It's been really interesting getting to really be on my own directing. This is the first time that I've really, from start to finish, worked on my own piece that hasn't just been a scene or a very short piece. So, this is very special. I've also had the really cool opportunity of getting to talk with the playwright of the play [E.M. Lewis].
Q: What was the most challenging part of directing this play?
Photo by Laura Parker
UCSB Student Arohan Deshpande, right, acts in “The Incident Report” at the production of the UCSB Theater department’s Fall One Acts.
A: Part of the biggest challenge has been working with peers. There's a power dynamic, I guess when it comes to me being the director and them being the actors. But at the same time, we're all peers, we're all about the same age, and we're all friends outside of this show. That's been one of the biggest challenges, finding that line between being friends with the people in the room and being their director.
Q: How did you manage these difficulties?
A: It's really just about putting my foot down. If there's too much chatter happening in the room, or we really need to get something done, it's really just about making sure that I have the confidence to kind of command the room.
Q: What are some of the benefits of working with other UCSB Theater students during this production?
A: It's been really fun because we've all gone through a lot of the same experiences within the department. And we can communicate a lot easier than we would if there was a very big age difference between a lot of the people in the room.
Q: What has been the most rewarding part about being a director for the Fall One Acts?
Photo by Laura Parker
UCSB student and actor Veda Arndt-Schreiber, back left, interrogating UCSB’s academic advisor Sean O'Shea, who acted in the play “The Incident Report.”
A: The most rewarding part has just been seeing how excited the cast and the crew get about the show and how much they enjoy it when something really cool happens, or we make a breakthrough about a scene. And it's really, really rewarding to be able to see that and know that was something that I was able to kind of cultivate and get people to find.
Q: Why would you encourage people to come attend UCSB’s Fall One Acts Theater productions?
A: It's really just about supporting art and supporting each other, and especially students. I think that everyone's got a creative side. And I think that coming and seeing the Fall One Acts, it's really just about seeing the kind of art that students want to create and put out there. We all have our reasons for presenting these plays to this specific audience of college students, especially here at UC Santa Barbara.
Photo by Mayra Gomez-Labrada
The cast and production team for UCSB Theater’s Fall One Acts celebrate the bittersweet end of their showcase producation last weekend.
Alexandra Alarcon is a fourth-year UCSB student majoring in Sociology. She is a Web and Social Media Intern with the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.