In her playwriting debut, Ariela Anhalt '11 chronicles a son's decision whether or not to reveal his engagement to his long-term boyfriend to his ailing father. For her work on the play, titled "For You," Anhalt was selected as one of three student winners of the Eleanor Frost and Rush & Loring Dodd Annual Playwriting Festival. "For You" will debut in the Hopkins Center Friday night.
Anhalt's "For You" follows Travis Kent, who has returned home along with the rest of his immediate family for one final visit with his father, Simon, who is dying of pancreatic cancer, Anhalt said. Although Travis came out to his family four years earlier, his very religious father did not react well to the news, and the two have not spoken about Travis' sexuality since. The play chronicles Kent's quest to reveal to his dying father that he is engaged to his longtime boyfriend, admist ambivalence from the rest of the family.
"[For You'] is about a conflict in a setting where everyone loves each other," Anhalt said. "It's about acceptance in a lot of different ways sort of understanding the people around us and how to handle a lack of understanding in return."
Much of the play focuses on Travis' own struggle to come to terms with his father's denial of a "fundamental part of who Travis is," Anhalt said.
"Over the course of the play, [Travis] has to come to understand he may need to deal with this on a personal level because he may not get what he needs from Simon, and he may need to figure out how to handle it internally," Anhalt said.
Just as the play provides important learning and growth opportunities for its characters, it has also helped Anhalt to develop as a writer, she said.
"I think I learned a lot about pacing from playwriting," Anhalt said. "It's not like a book where you assume someone is going to pause at a certain point in the chapter But in a play [viewers] are sitting and watching, you have to keep them interested and you have to create those moments essentially just in dialogue and action."
Last December, Anhalt published her first novel "Freefall," which tells the story of Luke Prescott, a teenage boy who witnesses a tragedy and has the power to decide his best friend's fate, The Dartmouth previously reported.
Anhalt said that along with adjusting to the differences between playwriting and authoring a novel, she faced various "creative challenges" while developing the characters in "For You."
"This was one of the first times when I've really tried to write adults and that was a really interesting experience for me," Anhalt said. "I had adult characters in Freefall.' but they weren't as central to the plot, and I was writing them as they would be seen by a 17-year-old."
Anhalt added that creating "For You" forced her to stretch her writing abilities to embody "not just a 17-year-old, but a 50-year-old man or a 48-year-old woman."
Anhalt, who returned to the College this weekend to oversee the play's production, is editing the script during the week leading up to this weekend's performance, she said.
"I think the cast is really great it's been very nice to see how much effort they're putting into [the play], how much they're trying to connect with the characters and putting so much of themselves into it," Anhalt said.
Watching the rehearsal is an interesting experience for Anhalt because she has the opportunity to see her play come alive, she said.
"It's fun to see certain lines or moments when they're taken differently than I kind of envisioned them," Anhalt said. "I don't actually have a problem with that I think it's kind of cool."
The cast will perform the play as a stage reading, meaning that the actors do not memorize their lines, but read them from on-stage scripts, Anhalt said.
Anhalt submitted "For You" to the Eleanor Frost and Ruth & Loring Dodd Annual Playwriting Festival competition last winter, she said, though she wrote the play during the Spring term of her freshman year.
Tabetha Xavier '10 and Sarah Laeuchli '11 will also present plays in the festival, according to a College press release. All three winners received a cash prize and an opportunity to receive feedback on their plays from members of the New York Theatre Workshop, The Dartmouth previously reported.
