Thanks to a couple of Northwestern Wildcats, Manhattan’s “wildest theatre festival” is about to get even wilder.
The New York International Fringe Festival, which runs Aug. 9 through 25, presents 180 of the world’s best emerging theater companies and performing artists. This August two productions created by NU students will appear in the festival lineup: “Jump,” a comedy-drama written by Speech senior Jess Lacher and directed by Speech senior Maureen Towey; and “The Second Amendment Club,” a multimedia drama directed by Speech senior Lee Overtree and starring Speech senior Ryan Harrison.
Though “Jump” and “The Second Amendment Club” both examine fear and isolation, their subject matter and tone vary widely.
Lacher wrote her play last winter, inspired by news of the “all-America bridge.”
“Apparently this is the place to kill yourself in the Akron-Canton area,” said Lacher, an Ohio native.
But there’s a catch: Because the bridge extends above a residential valley, not all of the jumpers meet a watery grave. Instead, some bodies have landed on citizens’ lawns and one even crashed through a company’s ceiling. Lacher’s play depicts the intersection of two women’s lives when one’s suicidal husband swan dives off the bridge and breaks through the other’s kitchen ceiling.
According to Lacher, “Jump” is about “fear of loneliness, fear of maturing and assuming responsibility for your life.” Towey characterizes the piece as dark but funny, quirky and delicate.
Lacher, Towey and the five-person cast set aside six weeks to prepare the show for its campus opening on May 24. The first three weeks were devoted to rewriting and perfecting the script.
“It was a totally great process because everybody was so smart and so invested in it that it really became like a collaboration,” Lacher said. “They made the characters easier to write.”
The show garnered enthusiastic praise. Now Lacher is eager to see if she can elicit the same response in New York.
“It’s such a great chance to meet people and get feedback from people who aren’t necessarily friends and family – which is also totally scary,” she said. “The big ambition is that we’ll make enough money from this that we’ll be able to put on another show as The Delicious Theater Group. I just want to be able to keep working with my friends.”
Overtree has similar goals for his production, which emerged from the most unlikely of places. Overtree originally petitioned Wave Productions, a student theater group, to direct a musical. While Wave accepted Overtree, the musical idea was canned in favor of Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax.”
Halfway through adapting the book for stage, Overtree was informed that he would be unable to secure the rights. He then explored two or three other options that ultimately fizzled.
Finally, Overtree approached Peter Morris, playwright of “The Second Amendment Club.” Overtree had been impressed by the show’s clarity and power when he saw it at the 2000 Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, and Morris was excited about producing it in America, Overtree explained. The show premiered at NU in March 2001.
“It takes place in Winnetka so he was excited about it being nearby,” Overtree said. “It just happened to fall into my lap. We were very lucky.”
Inspired by Columbine, the show consists of one long monologue delivered by a hate-spewing Winnetka teenager the night before an intended shooting spree at New Trier High School.
The character’s organic speech patterns and everyday pressures, which include troubled relationships with parents and the recent death of the family dog, make the play “dead on” in Overtree’s eyes.
“That’s what’s frightening about it,” Overtree said. “It’s a testament to how normal people can be driven to (hatred and violence).”
Morris will be joining the cast and crew in New York to prepare the production for its Fringe Festival debut.
“I don’t think we’re harboring any delusions about what’s in store for us; we don’t think that we’re hitting Broadway any time soon,” Overtree said. “(Nonetheless) this time in New York will be fun and exciting. … We all really care about the project and that really is our priority.”
