Three student playwrights will have the chance to spotlight their scripts at Vertigo Productions’ annual Winter Reading Series this weekend.
The Winter Reading Series features minimal tech in each performance, allowing audiences to focus entirely on the writing, Weinberg junior Nathan Gilbert explained.
“You’re seeing the skeleton of these shows,” said Gilbert, who is one of the playwrights. “It’s theatre in its purest form. You get to see the work in its imperfect totality, which is just really beautiful.”
This year, the play lineup includes “Itinerary” by Gilbert, “Crashing In” by Communication senior Kailey Morand and “Eternal Ellipsis” by Weinberg junior Zakyra Ashby.
Rehearsals for the readings started at the beginning of this quarter. It’s a secondary process, which means there are fewer rehearsals and the production is a smaller time commitment than primary-process student shows.
Communication junior and Vertigo President Nora James Eikner is acting in Gilbert’s play at WRS. She said she’s enjoying seeing each of the shows selected last spring come together.
“My favorite thing about Winter Reading Series is that you get to see the vastness of writers’ minds at this school,” Eikner said. “There’s this beautiful overlapping of different perspectives and stories, and because it focuses so much on the work and not on the production, it’s such a beautiful way to get more writers’ voices and their plays put up.”
Because of this added emphasis on the writing, Gilbert said watching and listening as his work is read aloud to an audience is “a scary jump to make.” Gilbert took a gap year after a difficult freshman year and said a lot of his moments and characters in “Itinerary” were taken from his own experiences, making the play personal to him.
Sharing his work is “really rewarding,” despite the fear, Gilbert said. Ahead of the reading, Gilbert shared how he’s watched his play take on a life of its own.
“One of the biggest challenges has been recognizing that ‘Itinerary’ is not my show anymore,” Gilbert said. “It will say ‘By Nathan Gilbert,’ but it becomes a collaborative process.”
This collaboration is aided by those on the production team. Communication junior Orville Amankwah is the producer for all three of the productions. This is their first time taking on this type of role, she said.
Amankwah serves as a liaison between the production and creative teams of the series, which she said is a show, unlike the average Northwestern theatre production.
“They are new stories written by students with something to say,” Amankwah said. “It’s not a perfect, polished product, and so rarely at Northwestern we get to see something in progress. It’s not fully produced, and that’s what makes it all the more loveable to me.”
Vertigo is hosting the series in Shanley Pavilion on Feb. 13, 14 and 15 at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. each night.
Correction: A previous version of this story included a misspelling of Zakyra Ashby’s name. The Daily regrets the error.
Email: daltonhanna2028@u.northwestern.edu
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