'Car Plays' Brake Rules of Theatrical Space
Westmont’s theatre arts department continues to push the boundaries of theatrical space with “The Car Play Project,” Thursday, Nov. 30, through Saturday, Dec. 2, at 7 p.m. at Hubbard Hall parking lot. About 40 students will perform 16 original plays simultaneously inside 16 parked vehicles. Each play is less than 12 minutes and the entire show will last two hours.
“It’s a real experiment,” says Mitchell Thomas, assistant professor of theatre arts. “It’s wonderful to try and to see what it’s like for actors, audiences, directors and writers to have to work with a completely different structure.”
It should be a real adventure for audiences as well. Each car offers a different play written, directed and acted by students. At the end of a play, guests will be able to pick another vehicle to enter, and can pick any car they wish to sit in.
Thomas says he gave students three rules: The plays have to be less than 12 minutes, a majority of the action must take place in an enclosed vehicle, and at least two audience members must be able to sit comfortably in the vehicle.
“The plays are so different,” says Thomas. “When audiences get into these cars, they’re stepping into wholly different worlds in term of what characters are like and what the situation is.”
In fact, the program for “The Car Play Project” will include a map and instruct audience members where to sit in a particular vehicle. Casts range from one to four actors with plays ranging from absurd farcical comedy to a terrifying drama.
Even if an audience member sits in for a play every 15 minutes, they’d only be able to see half of the shows in one evening. But Thomas says just because you’re in one vehicle watching one play, it doesn’t mean that you’re not aware of the other plays happening at the same time.
“It’s like the ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books from childhood,” Thomas says. “You read the page and at the bottom it says now turn to either 21, 51 or 87. And depending on where you turned it was a totally different story.”
He says because audience members will be choosing which cars to sit in, everyone’s experience will be unique.
“The sum total of one’s theatrical journey as an audience member will be different for each individual. Most of the plays don’t have any direct connection, but because we’re seeing them in sequence, there may actually be some sort of sub-story we take with us consciously or subconsciously.”
This fall the theatre arts department has been working with the theme of transforming theatrical space. “King Richard II” was performed in two different locations inside Trinity Church and Thomas performed “The Earthquake Predictor” inside a moving bus as part of Off-Axis, Santa Barbara’s month-long tribute to contemporary art.
Tickets are $10 general admission, $5 for seniors and students. Coffee, cider and dessert will be provided for free.