High school drama students took on the ultimate challenge when converting free verse epitaphs into a stage play.
The Alberta High School of Fine Arts advanced acting class spent the last four months transforming a collection of dark poems Edgar Lee Masters wrote in 1915 into a play consisting only of monologues for its upcoming production Spoon River Anthology.
Each of the 71 characters speaks from the grave about his or her former life in a fictional Illinois small town during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Director and advanced acting teacher Kelly Goutsis found a way to tell the story in a more theatrical way.
“There is no storyline,” she said. “I adapted it as I wanted and I picked my favourite poems. A lot of the characters had a relationship with others in the play. Even though they are monologues, we could still build a scene. There’s stories that bind the people together.”
There is no interaction between the characters so Goutsis said they developed the play so characters on stage take turns reciting their own monologues about their struggles living in the small town.
“There was corrupt leadership in the town,” she said. “A lot of female characters who lived in that era had a different station in family, life and society. We felt we needed to portray their view of what life was like in the town for these people at that time in society.”
Goutsis said the anthology consisted of about 200 poems and she narrowed it down to 71 monologues to create nine scenes.
This meant the cast of 19 students has to take on the persona of several characters.
“There are lots of times that the same students play three characters in the same scene,” she said.
Goutsis said students initially struggled with understanding what Masters was trying to portray because the poems were written in 1915.
“It’s not in a language we use today,” she said. “It’s more along the lines of Shakespeare. We spent a lot of time analyzing more than what we would for other plays.
“There are lots of references and metaphors we needed to dig into and ensure they were understood.”
English AP student Hannah Stevenson said understanding the poems was easy. What she struggled with was portraying three very different characters in the same performance.
Among them is a resentful, angry woman who is heartbroken after her husband performs an abortion on a young woman who was raped and dies following the operation.
She also plays a free-spirited woman who loves life and talks in metaphors and another who grew up in a mansion her father bought to impress others and learns her husband only married her because he thought she had money.
“It’s difficult having to play three characters in the same play,” said the Grade 12 student. “I picture the character in my mind and what they are like and how they feel the need to tell their story. I had to think of how they are different, like the way they talk and walk. It’s interesting getting into character and getting out of character very quickly.”
Stevenson said Spoon River Anthology is very different from anything else she’s performed at the Alberta High School of Fine Arts.
“Most plays have dialogue between characters and you might have a few monologues,” she said. “This one is very challenging.”
Grade 10 student Mathew Gore has double Stevenson’s work load, taking on six characters.
Among them are a successful, mean-spirited businessman who owns most of the businesses in town and a newspaper editor who craves scandal, revenge and thrives on hurting others.
“I’ve always wanted to play the villain,” Gore said. “It’s one of the roles I love to act because I get to be somebody I am not and sometimes I find who I am is not very entertaining.”
Gore said he uses body language to differentiate the six characters he portrays.
For instance, when portraying the businessman Gore looks down his nose, uses hand gestures and tries to take up as much of the stage as possible to convey his powerful presence.
“I do a lot of internal work in my head,” he said. “I want to know everything I can about them.”
While Gore has some acting experience, including a small role in Peter Pan and the role of Matthew in Anne of Green Gables at Westmount School, he found his experience at the Alberta High School of Fine Arts very different.
“With Matthew I could work lines with others - acting is reacting is what Mrs. Goutsis always says,” he said. “It was a lot easier because you had that support with them all.”
Spoon River Anthology is available for public viewing at Foothills Composite High School April 28 to 30 at 7 p.m. with a preview $5 performance on April 26. Tickets cost $10 and are available at the school or online at ahsfa.eventbrite.ca
