The NIU School of Theatre & Dance presents a work that didn’t exist a few months ago. And it doesn’t have an author in the traditional sense. “Women In To the Light”* is what is called a ‘devised’ play.
A “devised” theater piece is defined as one without an author, or script, as usually understood. Instead, it is the result of a process of collaboration and improvisation by the performers.
Kay Martinovich agrees with that definition. She’s the director of the NIU production of “Women In To Light.” She and fellow NIU faculty member Stanton Davis led the process of creating the work. Martinovich has done devised plays before. Even so, she says, it can be stressful starting with nothing more than the germ of an idea.
“We knew that the idea of the show was going to be bringing women from history to light. That was the goal of the show. How were we going to do that? I knew I wanted to get a whole range of women from all over the world from all different historical periods. And how we were going to do it, it was just day by day, kind of figuring it out as we went along.”
Martinovich says she gave the cast as well as herself the task of finding women they didn’t know. Then began a lengthy process to winnow the results of that search into something that might work.
“I would sometimes throw out the idea of, ‘let’s look at women from the 10th to the 12th century. What can you do with that?’ And then they’d do their searches, bring women in, we’d read their texts, and then talk about them -- why should this women be represented in the show? -- that sort of thing.”
Eventually, the cast came up with a list, then each developed their texts into stories, or scenes, incorporating movement to bring them to life. But how to make it all hang together? Martinovich says she was listening in a rehearsal to the story of an activist journalist who kept going back to conflict zones to report on the plight of women and children there. And she had a thought.
“What would it be like if this woman was thrown in to prison in a conflict zone, and possibly beaten so badly that she was between consciousness and unconsciousness, and all these women came to revive her, if possible.”
Martinovich says that gave her the hook for the story, the thread to tie the disparate stories together.
Martinovich says work on the final product continued until very close to opening, as the company labored to refine, and sometimes, pare down the play to something workable on stage. She says it has been a great learning experience for the students in the cast. But, she says, they came up with something that’s more than just an interesting experiment.
“A show is a journey. You don’t know whether you’re going to get there or not. And I‘m very happy to say, we have something. We definitely have something.”
And, she says, it’s something worth saving, something lasting, and worth revisiting.
“I think it warrants more viewings. I think it warrants us looking at it even further than this. I don’t think it ends here.”
Martinovich knows that’s how she and the cast feel. She believes the audience will think so, too.
The NIU School of Theatre & Dance production “Women In To Light” runs in conjunction with the Freshman BFA Showcase at 2 & 7:30 pm Saturday and 2 pm Sunday, Dec. 4 & 5 in the Holmes Student Center’s Diversions Lounge.
