The Berkeley Beacon

Media Credit: Cherylynn Tsushima Pecola Breedlove reflects on thoughts of beauty in The Bluest Eye.

Media Credit: Cherylynn Tsushima The headmaster tells the girls a story in Vendetta Chrome.

Media Credit: Cherylynn Tsushima The leading lady in October/November checks her musician friends hand for calluses as a sign of his guitar practice.

A recent Princeton University student's study confirmed what many playwrights and producers have often suspected. Women have a harder time getting their plays produced than men. Emerson Stage's compilation Coming of Age: An Evening of Short Plays by Women Playwrights, which runs Feb. 25-28 in the Semel Theater, may help rectify that discrepancy by promoting plays by contemporary female playwrights.

Emerson professor Maureen Shea, who selected the plays and directed The Bluest Eye, said she always begins her course on female playwrights by asking her class to name ten.

"No one has ever been able to write down ten," she said. "I find that somewhat appalling. We are not familiar with this voice, even though we are the majority in this country. That point of view is not really heard or seen as much as it should be, relative to the demographics."

Coming of Age is made up of three plays: October/November, The Bluest Eye and Vendetta Chrome. The plays work backward chronologically, spanning nearly a century.

October/November

The short play centers on a shy 15-year-old aspiring musician living in New York in the 1980s and the frank girl who pushes him to exceed his limits. They are the only characters; the play is a twosie, meaning that there are only two actors.

"This play is a gift to two actors, though," said director Thomas Nevels, a 2010 graduate student studying theatre education. "There's not one second of this play that isn't tour de force material for actors. Any piece of this play is something they can be proud to show."

The Bluest Eye

The Bluest Eye is an adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel about an 11-year-old African-American girl in 1940s southern Ohio who confronts the ideals of feminine beauty and growing racial tensions in a community that has turned its back on her.

"It is the beginning of a long-running conversation, and we are just happy to be a part of it," said associate director Cheyenne Postell, a senior theatre studies and Writing, Literature and Publishing major. "Women are under-celebrated, black women are under-celebrated, and we are just adding to their due."

Vendetta Chrome

Vendetta Chrome focuses on the journey of the teenage heroine to find herself as she uncovers her past through mysterious clues. The melodrama farce takes place at the Chicago Female College, an elocution school that harkens back to Emerson's beginnings as a school for oratory.

"The challenge with the play is that it isn't fully in the style and it isn't fully in the 1890s-there's contemporary language, there's cursing, there's one foot in 'now' and one foot in 'then,'" said director Kristen van Ginhoven, a 2010 graduate student studying theatre education. "So we played a lot in rehearsal with when is it full melodrama and when can we bring in more now."

The plays will also feature some form of live music, and there is a band section on stage. Sam Simahk, a senior BFA musical theatre major, composed original music for Vendetta Chrome and also worked on The Bluest Eye.

"It's unbelieveable-he's so talented," van Ginhoven said. "It's just part of the play-he's done a superb job. He's really taken what I'd imagined right from the beginning and spoken with Maureen about just under a year ago and he's making it happen."

Coming of Age is a large production- there are 86 students involved in the plays. Shea said the evening is a rich and challenging one for both the production team and the audience.

"It is a full plate. It is a three-course meal that feels like a 12-course meal," she said. "The degree of difficulty for this material is high, and I think that raises the bar for all the students involved."

Tickets are $8 for the Emerson community. There will be a talkback on Saturday and a forum with Vendetta Chrome playwright Sally Oswald Friday, 3-4 p.m. in the Semel.

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