Enjoy the Best of Campus Theater, All From the Comfort of Roone Arledge Auditorium

Campus traditions, literary classics, and the avant-garde all have a place in the Columbia theater community. This weekend, Columbia students will have the opportunity to see three unique theater productions. Despite their commonalities—all three are produced, directed, and performed completely by Columbia students, highlighting the range of talent on campus—there’s something for every taste, whether your tastes run to the time-honored or the untested, the spectacle or the personal.

The most high-profile production this weekend is the 114th Annual Varsity Show, a satire of student life at Columbia that, according to producer Erin Byrne, is “two-and-half hours of everyone making fun of everyone else.” Byrne explained that additional details are not available because the secretive nature of the show’s content is part of the fun. Rob Trump, co-writer with James Williams, appreciates the versatile nature of the show. “No angle is too far—situational comedy, visual gags, and one-liners are all fair game to make students laugh at themselves,” Trump said.

The creative team has been developing material and rehearsing for seven months, beginning with a series of workshop-retreats to foster an ensemble attitude. According to Michael Snyder, one of seven actors in this year’s production, the entire cast and crew have become very comfortable and are extremely excited about and proud of the work they have accomplished. After a full dress rehearsal yesterday evening, the Varsity Show opens tonight in Roone Arledge Auditorium at 8 p.m.

Taking place just floors above Roone Arledge is EDGES, this year’s Columbia University Performing Arts League special project. The intimate nature of Lerner’s Black Box Theater provides a vastly different space, but one that suits the nature of this new song cycle. Alessandra Hirsch, the artistic director and one of the show’s four cast members, explained, “A song cycle is a series of vocal pieces performed together to form an emotional arc.” Unlike a musical, it lacks a traditional linear plot, but instead follows the transitions in the lives of four individuals, separately and together. Written by two theater graduates from the University of Michigan, EDGES offers a unique chance to see an early workshop performance of a brand new show.

Benj Pasek, one of the composers, has consulted heavily with the performers as they were preparing. Hirsch explained that the show, while very different from classical musical theater, fits in with the current trend exhibited by Broadway shows such as Passing Strange and Glory Days. These shows are more akin to concerts than to musicals, favoring rock songs over show tunes. For Hirsch, Columbia is “literally on Broadway, but not figuratively.” She sees this show as a chance to bring Columbia up to the times. The music is contemporary and vocally complex, and the creative team hopes this will appeal to people who might not normally enjoy musical theater. Far from being inaccessible, however, the show is peppered with humor and relevance to the issues that impact young people in America today. As a final selling point, Hirsch notes that the show “is free, short, and a good study break.”

In addition to the modern, student theatergoers will also get a chance this weekend to rediscover the timeless in the 14th annual King’s Crown Shakespeare Troupe spring show. This year, the creative team has chosen As You Like It. Director Priyanka Choksi feels the play is well suited to the beauty of the Columbia campus in the spring. “It takes place in the forest of Arden, and to create that, the outdoors are better than any set,” Choksi said.

Choksi intentionally chose locations that emphasize the corners of Columbia that often get overlooked. In order to bring the audience into Shakespeare’s world, Choksi has re-invented the role of the shills, company members who escort the audience from one location to the next. Interspersed with the audience, they involve the spectators in the action and serve as a bridge between the real world and the world of the play.

Involvement is integral to the philosophy of King’s Crown. Chas Carey, who plays Touchstone, called it “Marxist theater”: everyone who auditions works on the production, creating a community and sharing the love of theater with others. Dan Blank, who plays Duke Senior, recounted the origin of the theater group as a specific response against the Varsity Show, which King’s Crown founders considered elitist and egotistic.
But time has healed all wounds. As You Like It producer Kate Stahl said that, as a whole, the Columbia theater community is united. “My best friend is one of the performers in EDGES, and I intend to see all three shows,” Stahl said. She explained that the shows have been scheduled in such a way so that someone could hypothetically attend all of them over the course of two days. “Our midnight show is so Varsity Show members can join us, and the entire As You Like It company will go see Varsity Show as a group,” she said. The productions this weekend do not cancel each other out, instead providing a breadth of talent and a showcase for the many abilities of Columbia students.