Elaina Eakle
Ehe001@marietta.edu
The Marietta College Theatre Department debuted a double feature of plays, Valery Briusov’s “The Wayfarer” and Deborah Pryor’s “The Love Talker,” on Nov. 14.
While separate plays, the two carry similar themes. “The Wayfarer” is set in rural Russia in the early 1900s. It provides a glimpse into the mind of Julia, a young forester’s daughter played by Lindsey Schrock, who has grand dreams of being whisked away by a prince to escape her boring life. When a stranger, the wayfarer, knocks on her door in the night, she hopes her dreams are coming true, though the following events do not play out as she had hoped. The play uniquely casts the wayfarer as a puppet.
“The artistic team for this production uses two puppets and four student artists to represent both the character and the multilayered idea of ‘the Wayfarer,’” Theatre Director Jeffrey Cordell said. “Briusov specifically writes about the impacts of puppets on an audience in his published theories on drama and theatre.”
“The Love Talker” follows sisters Gowdie and Bun Blackmun, played by Amber Smrek and Gabrielle Bailes, in the Clinch Mountains of Virginia, and explores Appalachian folklore. Gowdie sees no harm in her curiosity about mysterious entities that live in the forest and ignores Bun’s warnings, though learns that the beings are not as harmless as they appear, and Bun knows more about them than she had revealed.
“I have been hoping to direct this play and introduce these characters to students and audiences for over a decade now,” Cordell said. “These perturbed spirits may finally let me rest now, and start pestering the boundaries of your world once you leave our theatre.”
While the plays each have very different characters and settings, they both explore love, lust, illusion and dreams. The main characters each face similar difficulties of growing up in relative isolation.
“I definitely think both of these plays say so much about the female experience and our season’s theme of The Female Species,” Schrock said. “The girls experience loneliness, conflicting desires of security and adventure, and overall a sexual awakening of sorts.”
Angela Shrader, who directed the puppet’s feet in “The Wayfarer” and played a mysterious Appalachian spirit in “The Love Talker,” agrees that the two plays are perfectly paired.
“I love how they melt together,” she said. “And it’s really interesting that Julia’s mind and home can just melt into the home of Gowdie’s and Bun’s who have some similar fears.”
Audience members Drew Stone and Tyler Zymroz, both juniors at Marietta College, also enjoyed the performance.
“I thought it was very interesting,” Stone said. “The actors and actresses brought some good emotion and poise to the roles.”
Both Stone and Zymroz were familiar with “The Wayfarer,” and agreed that it was well done.
“We had to read [“The Wayfarer”] for our theater class,” Zymroz said. “It was interesting to see how they portrayed the characters and did the props.”
In addition to the plays, the theatre department also debuted a new thrust stage, a stage that extends into the audience and has audience members seated on three sides of the stage.
“The Wayfarer” and “The Love Talker” will be performed again in the Hermann Fine Arts Center on Nov. 21 at 8 p.m., and Nov. 22 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Tickets may be reserved online at http://www.marietta.edu/~thea/boxoffice.html .
