Wouldn't it be nice to kill off any "Melrose Place" cast member you wanted to? Billy? Amanda? Michael? Thankfully, "Melrose Place" producer Aaron Spelling recently announced that about half the cast will be leaving the show by its seventh season. But that won't be until the fall. What to do in the meantime?
You should check out "Killing Game," an absurdist play by Eugene Ionesco opening tonight at the Bentley Theater, in which everybody -- including any annoying cast members -- dies before the curtain comes down. And that's a promise.
Directed by Nicole Wiley '98 for her senior thesis, "Killing Game," spares no one. No matter how cute the character is, no matter how nice -- they're all gonna die. That's actors' equity for you.
In the play, a mysterious Black Monk who, according to Wiley, is "literally the face of Death," kills the entire cast by spreading a deadly plague within a small town. An ensemble cast of eight undergraduate actors who "work together to portray the entire town" collectively take on over 50 different roles. The multiple roles not only necessitate speedy costumes changes of the actors, but demand multiple death scenes -- "which are every actor's dream," Wiley said, laughing.
"Killing Game" takes a knowing look at "mob mentality and crowd hysteria" and how people in all different kinds of situations react differently to the plague.
For all its apparent doom-and-gloom mentality, "Killing Game" is supposed to be "very, very funny," Wiley insisted. She said she liked to describe the play as a "tragifarce," covered in broad strokes of humor.
There are "a lot of cheesy moments, cheap laughs" and "pratfalls galore," Wiley promised. "Death and mayhem are told in an extremely comical and entertaining fashion."
Wiley said that she has been a huge fan of absurdist theater -- especially the Jacobean and classical Shakespearean sort for years. She said that she greatly admires the absurdists' "innovative use of language," citing the works of two of her favorite absurdist playwrights -- Samuel Beckett and Ionesco.
While Beckett is quite parsimonious with lines for his actors, Wiley said, Ionesco's plays are jam-packed with them.
Professing a dislike of realism, Wiley has only directed absurdist plays like "Come and Go" by Beckett during her sophomore winter. She was also at the helm of five short absurdist plays that she had compiled herself, titled "Make Sense Who May."
After helming these short works, Wiley said that her "big thing" was to "build myself" so that she could do a longer absurdist piece. She said she had had her eye on Ionesco's "Killing Game" for a couple of years.
She said she was drawn to the uniqueness of the play which is arranged in 17 vignettes. It does not follow the typical format of a play "with a beginning, middle and end" and does not use the "same characters all the way through." Instead, there are new characters in every scene.
"It's nothing like anything that has been seen on the Dartmouth stage," Wiley said. "You need to see it to believe it."
Wiley also stressed how impressed she was with the cast.
"They're amazing ... The ensemble dynamic amazes me more and more everyday." She described all the actors as possessing "very high energy" and tremendous "talent and dedication to the show."
Wiley is also getting a little help from her friends in the Drama department like senior drama major designers Colin Bills '98 and Charles Peden '98.
After the play's run, Wiley will write a research paper on Ionesco, the absurdist movement and her experiences with her production.
While Wiley said she has no definitive post-graduation plans, she has narrowed her ideas down. She declared that she was "torn between pursuing an academic path and staying strictly in the arts." Ideally, though, Wiley said, "I'd like to integrate [arts and academia] in some way."
"Hopefully, I'm on my way to worldly fame." Wiley joked. She paused. "I just have to get there!"
