Manuscript Offers More Reasons Not to Plagiarize

CU Players' first production of the semester includes Hitchcockian plot twists, a secret love affair, and plagiarism.

Paul Grellong's Manuscript (starring Noam Harary, CC '08, Marc Iserlis, CC '10, and Catherine Mersereau, CC '08) debuts tonight at the Black Box. And director Dan Blank, CC '09, believes the above isn't all the play has to offer.

"It's very relevant to Columbia in that it's a story that involves this drive for ambition, essentially sacrificing things like friendship in order to gain success. It's about opportunism. It centers around an incident of plagiarism. There are three freshmen-all Ivy League students. It's in our backyard; the students are very much like ourselves. We see in the show the same pressures to succeed that we ourselves see on a daily basis," he said.

Set in a Brooklyn Heights brownstone, Manuscript focuses on three college freshmen whose lives drastically change with the discovery of an unpublished manuscript that can guarantee success. According to Blank, Manuscript shows the cost of unbridled ambition and deceit in a world where success is everything and friendships are secondary. Instead of presenting a far-off imaginary world like so many theater pieces at Columbia, he said, Manuscript shows us a world eerily similar to our own.

President of CU Players Sam Packard, CC '09, decided to put on the show because of the relatable characters in Manuscript.

"The lead character is this girl who's really ambitious. She thinks pretty highly of herself. In the end, her complete and utter humiliation-the depiction of that is very interesting. CU Players likes to put on theater that is new and relevant to Columbia students. And this play fulfills all of that," Packard said.

"There are somewhat dark plot twists. The dialogue is very fast-paced. It keeps you guessing until the very end. Different layers of the play unfold as the show goes on," Blank added.

Blank has previously directed and acted in shows for the King's Crown Shakespeare Troupe and liked the idea of directing a piece of straight theater for CU Players.

"So many of the pieces on this campus try to dazzle and stuff like that. There's a theater renaissance at Columbia right now, with unbelievable productions and something for everyone. The Columbia theater scene is really beginning to thrive," he said. "I wanted to get in on the ground floor of this theater renaissance that's happening. And a straight play with relevance to Columbia seemed like a great way to do that."

Co-producer Priyanka Choksi, BC '08, calls Manuscript "the perfect piece of theater."

"We don't have too many strong short plays. Everything's scaled down but has so much power. It keeps your attention for more than an hour and a half, because even after the play you're thinking about it," she said.

For CU Players, Manuscript debut is more than just a perfect piece of theater. This semester marks CU Players' "coming out" onto the campus theater community, according to Packard.

"We're putting up four shows and really trying to fill that gap which has been absent in the past-straight theater at Columbia," he said.