‘Call me Ishmael’

STAGE+Student+Theatre+rehearses+for+the+upcoming+performance+of+Moby+Dick+-+Rehearsed+in+Daggy+Hall%2C+Monday%2C+Dec.+2.

STAGE Student Theatre rehearses for the upcoming performance of “Moby Dick – Rehearsed” in Daggy Hall, Monday, Dec. 2.

Catherine Kruse Evergreen Theatre reporter

 

The great white whale is crashing into Daggy Hall this weekend for two nights of sailing, singing and King Lear.

“Moby Dick-Rehearsed” is a play written by Orson Welles. A play within a play, it tells the story of actors performing Shakespeare’s “King Lear” when the lead actor suggests they do the story of Moby Dick. The rest of the show is set to look like a rehearsal for a play, with a single actor playing multiple roles, said the show director Joseph Seguin.

“We tried to not show a timeline,” Seguin said. “The play itself is based around the time the book came out.”

The performance will be put on by the members of STAGE Student Theatre. The actors and actresses will be required to wear costumes and use props in the beginning of the show, but during “Moby Dick” they will have to pantomime everything, Seguin said.

Seguin said the actors use props in the beginning of the play to define and mimic reality. Although the book was originally set in early 1900s, the costumes and props in the play do not imply a specific time setting. The actual place setting is a modern theater, with the intention of giving off the feel of a typical rehearsal.

“It’s an acting company doing ‘Moby Dick’ in the spur of the moment,” said Alex Askerman, the stage manager for the show. “It looks like a lot of the actors don’t want to do it but eventually work their way into it.”

Many of the actors in the show play multiple roles. Jonathan O’Guin plays the Governor, Father Mapple and Captain Ahab. O’Guin said Father Mapple is a smaller role and is present for only two pages of dialogue when he gives a sermon.

The Governor in the show owns the theater where actors perform. As a character, he also plays the role of Captain Ahab and King Lear, which gives O’Guin four different roles to play throughout the show.

Askerman said one of the most difficult parts about the show is when people get sick. From coming down with a cold to an actor with food poisoning, it’s the responsibility of the cast and crew to work around the absences to make sure the scenes get run through. Seguin said defining the whale is difficult since everything in ‘Moby Dick’ is pantomimed and relies on the suggestion of the actors.

O’Guin said the most difficult part is when he has to play Captain Ahab. In studying the character, O’Guin said most people only see the crazy one-legged man with a broken skull and post-traumatic stress disorder. People don’t see the Ahab who has had 40 years of whaling experience and who feels his life is meaningless by Moby Dick’s existence, he said.

Both O’Guin and Seguin agree that the beginning is their favorite part of the show, where the audience can see the actors’ characters and how they came to be in that situation. Seguin also said that the show begins and ends with the actors, and the beginning shows how a theater would have worked at the time.

Performances of “Moby Dick-Rehearsed” will be in Wadleigh Theatre in Daggy Hall on Dec. 6 at 7:30 p.m. and Dec. 7 at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $5.

Members of STAGE Student Theatre also encourage new members to come to meetings on Thursdays at 5 p.m. in the Daggy Hall stage room.