NV is WPI's Theater Festival, started by Professor Susan Vick on the spring of 1983. It started small and "it just grew as more voices emerged," said Prof, Vick with a smile.
She has been the coordinator of the event since then, except for last year's NV, when she was on sabbatical and Prof. O'Donnell coordinated it for her. In NV all plays are scripted, directed and performed by members of the WPI community. It is a totally open festival and everybody is encouraged to submit by February first. "I feel it is important to let people know that it [the selection process] is a totally blind reading." Meaning that the 5 dramaturgs reading and evaluating the plays do not know who wrote the play. "After everybody has read the plays we discuss them. It's a very fair process," she said.
Prof Vick also explained the reasons for calling this year's festival NV One-Three saying that most theater people are extremely superstitious and thought about not having a NV this year. Prof. Vick on the contrary decided to have a NV 12+1, and started calling it One-Three, "somehow people started calling it One-Three too. So it stayed like that," she explained.
This year 48 plays were submitted and 22 were accepted. Prof. Vick recalls that the highest number of plays submitted was 54 and 30 for the number of plays performed. She is very excited about this year's festival. "New Voices One-Three is one of our best. We have an unusual number of playwrights and people who have been involved for three or four years in the festival." The result is "a very sophisticated festival."
In fact, NV One-Three has a wide variety of plays ranging from comedy to drama, from westerns to religious drama, from medieval to modern society and "different takes on things you would not normally expect to encounter in a college festival." She also says that there is nothing like NV around and that "we [WPI] are just amazing." Some schools have some kind of theater festival but "we are One-Three" she says excitedly. For 12+1 years WPI has managed to present its theater festival to the WPI community as well as other schools. Professors from Holy Cross and Assumption University emailed her earlier during the week to have her send them a program "as soon as possible."
"As soon as possible" was also a common word from Melissa LaGrecca, '97, executive producer of the festival. For her it is the first time producing. "More than 200 students are involved in NV," as she explains a little more about NV "It all starts with the play selection process. After that, we spend a week or two looking for directors. Meanwhile we set dates for auditions which take up a week. After auditions the directors choose their cast." She also assures that everybody who auditions gets a role. It is then when thing get really hectic, cast rehearsal, stage design, prop and costume search, publicity. LaGrecca also explained that they were on a tight schedule. They only had six days to build the set and get the lights up before technical rehearsals.
"All new voices are different. No New Voices is like the one before." When asked what the most appealing feature of NV was, she quoted Dawn Varacchi: "It is the single largest event on campus that involves as many people." As time passes by "we [NV] keep on getting better and better."
Of the 250 people involved in the festival, it is interesting to note that two of them are Prof. Helen Vasallo, from the Management Department, and Prof. Rubinstein from the Computer Science Department. For Prof. Vasallo this will be her second appearance on a WPI stage. She was in Fahrenheit 451. "The energy that bounces around is incredible," Vasallo said. For Prof. Rubinstein is his first time, but he wrote two of the plays being performed. They both seem to be having more fun than the students and defined the experience as a "rejuvenating experience."
"The writers are exceptionally talented," Vasallo said. They both also admire the effort all the students were putting into it. "They work hard and know what they want."
An argument nobody can disagree with. Director, actors and crew are working on a tight schedule. 22 plays will be performed twice in 4 days, from April 19th to the 22nd at Alden Hall.
Dawn Varacchi, '95, is one of the pro's in NV, she has been involved in it since she was a freshman. In between acts and costume runs she was able to comment, "the biggest thing about the festival is seeing the great amount of people and plays come together." For everybody at new voices, as well as for her, " the biggest reward is seeing it happen on stage." But, what is happening on stage? In this New Voices almost everything, cowboys, bombs, sword fighting, the last supper and smallpox, just to mention a few.
New Voices is entirely free and definitely worth the time. After watching one of the plays, Prof. Vick's words made a lot of sense: "There is no reason to assume that anything we are doing here is any less important that anything happening anywhere in the theater world."