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After six years on the Victory Gardens stage, Playwrights-in-Progress returns to its Hixon Hall, faculty-mentored roots.

By Lindsay Beller

Emily Capettini '09 drew inspiration from some of her favorite paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago and from a modern poetry class and incorporated them into her play Coming & Going, which was produced for Playwrights-in-Progress this year. (Photo by Chip Williams)

A young man and woman dash into an art museum. She lovingly points out several of her favorite paintings, hoping her boyfriend will appreciate them as much as she does. The man tries, but he keeps mixing up the artists' names.

Frustrated, he notices a book of Gertrude Stein's poetry on a bench and rushes over, confessing that his love for words overpowers his interest in art. He expresses worries that their differences will keep them apart.

"We saw (Van Gogh's) Starry Night two months ago. I was going to propose to her then. I had a ring and everything, but then...then, I don't know. Look at her. She's beautiful. This art stuff makes her happy. I don't get it. She thinks some scrap of paper that some guy dropped a bucket of paint onto is brilliant, but all I see is paint," the young man says to the audience.

"Cut!" yells Maggie Speer, a theater professor who is directing the play. They are rehearsing Coming & Going, a play written by Emily Capettini '09 about a young couple whose lack of communication over their different interests threatens to derail their relationship.

Capettini sits in the front row and whispers to the woman next to her, Nambi Kelley, a Chicago playwright and actress who has taught playwriting at the College. "Nambi and I were just talking," Capettini says to Speer and to the student actors and crew. "Instead of talking to the audience, can the man talk to the book?"

Kelley explains the idea behind the change. "They don't know how to communicate well to each other. She communicates through paintings and he communicates through words. Talking to the book reinforces that." They run through the scene again with the change noted in the script. 

Capettini is one of four students who saw her play produced for Playwrights-in-Progress (PiP) — an annual event in which student playwrights submit original scripts and undergo a revision process with the director, cast, crew, and professional playwrights like Kelley to bring the performance to the Hixon Hall stage.

This year marks PiP's 27th show. It was also a comeback of sorts for the program. With the exception of last year, PiP had run annually since 1981 when Director of Theater Louise Mason and English professor Nance Van Winckel started it as a way to feature original work from their co-taught playwriting course. The first show was billed as "an evening of reader's theatre," meaning students gave staged readings with minimal sets and costumes.

For two decades PiP focused more on developing between three to seven scripts a year rather than on creating a highly produced show. Scripts were selected based on several factors. "The idea of giving an outlet for students to have their writing heard is more important than merely the quality of the writing," says Lecturer in Theater Dennis Mae. "We look for a variety, what is contemporary, and what's on the minds of students today." Indeed, the subjects of the more than 125 student-written plays over the years ranged from comedy to drama with topics like romance, death, and friendship.

PiP continued in this vein until 2001, when the College received a $25,000 James S. Kemper Foundation grant to collaborate with Tony-award winning Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago. Participating student playwrights, directors, and actors worked closely with Victory Gardens artistic staff and showcased their work in performances for audiences of the professional Chicago theater and for the campus community at the Allan Carr Theatre in Hixon Hall.

But when the grant ended in 2007, the Department of Theater was unsure of what to do. This year, PiP returned to its roots as a faculty-mentored program.

"When PiP started, the idea was that it wouldn't be a big fancy production, but rather the development of a script," says Associate Professor of Theater Richard Pettengill. "You'd have a process where the writer could consult with a variety of people and undergo a process of revision to get the script to a good place. Considering the lean economic times we're in, it's been a healthy opportunity to return to the original bare-bones vision of the program. But we've taken care to maintain the involvement of a professional playwright; we feel that's invaluable for our students."

Capettini feels her script benefitted from the process of working with Kelley, a professional playwright mentor, who has worked as an adjunct professor at the College. "Nambi found a few things that I had overlooked, and we talked through her ideas," she says. "The process of writing the script to seeing it performed was educational and rewarding. I thought it was short and rough in the beginning, but everyone helped me pull out what was on the page."

And whatever happened to the young man and woman in the art museum, unsure of where their relationship was going?

After they share their fears, the young woman says to her boyfriend, "You put so much emphasis on words, you can't even see what's right in front of you. And you know I don't understand one bit of your poetry nonsense!"

"So you'll...?" he begins.

She cuts him off. "You don't even have to ask."

They kiss, and exit stage right.

"They realize that it doesn't matter that they like different things," Capettini says. "They can still have a relationship where they communicate and be happy with each other." 

Lindsay Beller is the editor of Spectrum.