Student-written production garners wide-spread recognition
by Brian Shults se news editor

    A SE Campus student’s original play received praise throughout Tarrant County during its off-campus run at Fort Worth’s Sage & Silo Theatre.

   Writer, Claudia Acosta, is the first student in approximately 15 years to have a TCC production picked-up and co-produced by an outside theater, the first student from SE Campus to have an original play produced by the school and the first SE student to direct and write a play entered into the American College Theatre Festival (ACTF). It is also the first play she ever wrote.

   Girlie Stories is Acosta’s nine-monologue scour of anger, frustration and delight in being female.

   During the fall 2001 semester, during Girlie Stories’ initial run on SE Campus, she said, “… sometimes it’s okay not to accept the roles society usually throws us (females).”

   Yet Acosta believes that in certain situations when the role is seeing one’s thoughts transformed from paper to stage, exceptions are acceptable.

   “The show received a great deal of talk because of its nature and the circumstance surrounding its being the first student production at SE. John Templin, artistic director at Sage & Silo Theatre, heard about it and talked to me about the piece. We agreed that it needed another audience,” John Shafer, SE director of theater, said.

   The audience at Sage & Silo proved to be accommodating and receptive to the work’s brashness, Acosta said.

   “It was really exciting to shake the hands, meet and talk to an older generation and see they still identified with them (the characters),” she said.

   “The most beautiful compliment I have ever had,” she said, “is when a local female poet came up to me after the show and said, ‘I wished I could have done this 20 years ago. I wanted to say the same things you did.’”

   In addition to the warm reception at Sage & Silo, Girlie Stories’ esteem flowed in from other sources including an Award of Excellence in Playwriting, an entry in the John Cauble Short Play Competition, the SiTV Latino Playwriting Competition, the Michael Kanin Playwriting Competition and the Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway Short Play Competition in New York City.

   The three actresses in the play—Kimberly Evans, Sarah Porritt and Deborah Prickett—earned Irene Ryan nominations.

   John Davis, the only male featured, missed appearing in all of Girlie Stories’ extended run because of auditions for the South Eastern Theatre Conference (SETC). Jason Hernandez filled in for Davis in his absence.

   David Vieira, co-director, also auditioned for the SETC.

   James Yeager, graphic designer, won an Award of Excellence in Program Graphics for his effort.
 

  Others involved include A.J. Adams, light board operator; Tressa Oswalt, graphics consultant; Michael Garner, technical theater consultant, and Templin and Shafer, co-producers.

   The buzz surrounding the play attracted theater professionals from Texas Christian University to Jubilee Theatre. And during the play’s transition to Sage’s stage, Jubilee director Rudy Eastman asked if Acosta would be interested in lengthening the play and would consider allowing him to direct it as part of his spring repertoire.

   Acosta declined.

   “Girlie Stories is so personal; it is a story that is mine. Now that I have said what I needed, that chapter in my life is done,” she said.

   However, Eastman still discovered another element within the play to interest him. Prickett, featured actress, fit his profile of a 20th Century Creole Juliet and was cast in Jubilee’s upcoming adaptation of the Shakespeare classic Romeo and Juliet.

   Acosta gained much from having witnessed her work live on stage.

   “I now have a better idea of how to create pictures, define moments and show a story evolve on stage,” she said.

   She is currently enrolled in SE Campus’ playwriting class. All the student plays written in the class will be performed in the Studio Theatre, a new SE addition devoted solely to student works.
 

  An upcoming theme potentially revolves around the comedy and drama of young people working at a restaurant over a 24-hour period, she said.