The hard work, long hours, and dedication of 11 talented students and one very devoted director will culminate onstage at CFA's Black Box Theater Wednesday night.
The play in question is Fen, penned by noted English playwright and feminist Caryl Churchill. Jerry Finnegan, associate professor of acting and longtime member of the UB faculty, directs the incarnation of the play that will grace the Black Box stage starting on Wednesday night.
Fen, at its core, is a character drama. The play centers on Val and Frank – the former is a farm laborer, wife, and mother, the latter is the former's lover – and their affair, which is spurred on in part by the dehumanizing conditions the two live in. The two are "trapped" by their situation, according to Finnegan.
"Aspirations don't even exist, they feel almost ridiculous in this [context]…it's about the frustrations of life not lived well," Finnegan said.
The struggle of those with no agency to find and exercise some makes up much of the play's drama. The story of Val and Frank is interspersed with short vignettes – like "brushstrokes," according to Finnegan – that give glimpses into the lives of others who inhabit the titular fen.
The fen itself – a "fen" being a type of wetland with mineral-rich soil ideal for farming, for those who don't know – is more than just the play's setting. Indeed, it's practically a character in its own right, as its condition through history mirrors that of its characters. Like Val, Frank, and their cohorts, the fen is the subject of capitalistic exploitation, from its transformation into farmland in the late feudal period (covered in some of the play's vignettes) to its purchase by Japanese venture capitalists in the early 1980s, the work's present.
"It's almost like fate," Finnegan said. "Fate is the land, it's never being given anything."
Despite the repute of its author and universality of its themes, Fen is a little-known work, and is rarely performed, in part due to the demands placed on actors by its challenging script. The students working under Finnegan, however, are more than up to the challenge.
"I'm really happy to be in a show that's not really done often," said Tyler Austin, a sophomore media studies major and the play's male lead of Frank. "[That way I can't] base my character off of something that I've seen before, or…have an expectation about how the show should look like based on other things."
With the exception of Austin and the female lead, every student actor and actress plays two separate – and often radically different – roles. This, coupled with the poetic-yet-laconic nature of Churchill's writing, forces the student actors and actresses to be as expressive and impressive as possible in course of their brief time on stage.
Fen will be performed at CFA's Black Box Theater from Wednesday to Sunday; Wednesday through Saturday's shows will be performed at 7:30 p.m., while Sunday's performance is a 2 p.m. matinée. Tickets are $10 for students and $20 for nonstudents.
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