During my junior year as an undergraduate at Saint Louis University, I had the opportunity to enroll in a theatre director class. The final assignment was to direct a one-act play. I spent hours in the library trying to find the perfect script. After going through dozens of books, I found one that had many good one-act plays in it. I read many of them from start to finish, and the one that I kept reading over again was July 7, 1994 by Donald Margulies.
The script had everything that I was looking for. It featured an ensemble cast, with diverse characters who come from different backgrounds. I am proud to say that the production we made was the most diverse in the semester we performed. Not to give any spoilers away about the show, but the main plotline is about a doctor who has a nightmare one night and seemingly relives what happened in it in real life. The major takeaway I found from the story is that sometimes we may have preconceived notions about how things are going to rollout in our lives, but if you approach your job and other aspects of life with an open heart and mind you’ll discover that you can make changes in people’s lives for the better. The message is very much a “do onto others” type of thing, and I really enjoyed every aspect of the production.
Of course, we did things a little bit differently. The production was rehearsed and performed in a black box theatre. With such an intimidate environment, we could use tightly focused lighting to put emphasis on the actor’s expressions in much the same way as it could occur in film and television. The result was that we came up with something that felt very personal, and we received a lot of positive feedback for this.
Another change that we made was in regards to the nightmare. This is the first part of the one-act. We added another actress to perform what was happening in the nightmare, and she also appeared throughout the remaining scenes. This worked well because two of the biggest scenes were almost entirely performed in Spanish, and the new character could function as a translator for the audience. I knew it was a big risk to do something like this but it went extremely well.
There wasn’t a lot of music in the show. During the nightmare scene we used the first minute of instrumental of Prince’s “Condition of the Heart” from the Prince and The Revolution album-Around the World in a Day. Other than that, in between each scene we used sound effects of things that were in the upcoming action. Stuff like heartbeats, ticking clocks, etc. The sound was deliberately minimalistic to match the staging in a black box theater.
The overall production was strong. I received a lot of good feedback about the show, and more specifically about how all the aspects of theatre worked together. I was thrilled that people had this experience. For me it was a long journey because I fell in love with the words in the play, and with every new rehearsal the show created a lasting impression.