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Student
Play Project Honors Hallie Flanagan
The
Hallie Flanagan Project
Plays:
an
act of the living by Jane Jones, directed by
Maureen Boman, starring Nora Mally
No
Child Left: The Living Obituary by Kendra Arimoto,
directed by Abbie Chase, starring Nora Mally and
Meredith Mitchell
My
Dad Was My Hero by
Lisa Flora Meyers, directed by Nora Mally, starring
Meredith Mitchell
Guest
Lecture by
Nora Mally directed by Meredith Mitchell, starring
Maureen Boman
Produced by Nikki
Beck; stage management by Hana Kadoyama |
Last July, ,
a local company founded in 2008 by Smith theatre students
Nora Mally ’10 and Nikki Beck ’08, produced its first play
in Berkeley, Calif. A few months later, Mally and Beck, who
have both worked with the New Century Theatre at Smith, were
itching to produce their second play.
The result of their
aspiration, the Hallie Flanagan Project, will be performed
on Monday, March 1, at 7 p.m. in, fittingly, the Hallie Flanagan
Studio Theatre, Mendenhall Center.
Mally and Beck recently
wrote about the Hallie Flanagan Project for the Gate:
We wanted our second show to
be something that celebrated Smith College and the theatre
department, but also something that could be very ensemble-based,
so that we could have a good time working on it. We focused
our production on Hallie Flanagan and the Federal Theatre
Project. After the House Un-American Activities Committee
shut down the Works Progress Administration and the Federal
Theatre Project in 1939, Hallie Flanagan was invited to come
to Smith, where she was given the post of Dean of the College,
and the task of founding a drama department. While at Smith,
Hallie taught a class called "Theatre as Life Force." It
was hard to resist.
The main goal of this project
is to focus on the joys and challenges of doing theatre,
at Smith and in the real world. The focus on Hallie Flanagan
inspired us not only because of her Smith connection, but
also because of the brief span of the Federal Theatre Project,
which showed a potential—and
ultimately failed—dream
of what theatre could accomplish. We are looking for theatre
that will provoke and inspire without straying too far from our own backyards.
We asked playwrights, including
current students, alumnae, and grad students, to join our
project. We were thrilled by the responses: Playwrights Jane
Jones ’09,
Lisa Flora Meyers ’11, Kendra Arimoto, an MFA Candidate in
playwriting, and Nora Mally ’10 wrote a total of six monologues.
 For most of us this was the
first time in our Smith careers that we didn’t have to answer to anyone else while
making theatre. We set our own schedules, gave ourselves
our own ultimatums, and collectively discussed all of the
artistic decisions without a faculty member to approve or
disapprove of our choices, although we are very grateful
for the departmental support we’ve received. That alone has
been a very freeing experience, especially for the graduating
seniors among us, and has helped us prove to ourselves that
we are ready to take on leadership roles in the world of
professional theatre.
We then approached Abbie Chase ’10,
Meredith Mitchell ’10, and Maureen Boman ’10,
all three strong actors and directors, and all three readily
agreed to join the project. Keeping the ensemble small not only helped us to
develop close actor/director collaboration, but also allowed everyone to work
with each other in different capacities.
The result of this grand collaboration
is the Hallie Flanagan Project, six plays in one night, Monday,
March 1. Free and open to the public.
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