Playing off the classic theme of life choices, a new play by MU graduate student Matt Fotis, “The Girl in the Cube,” makes the audience question whether they should settle for their boring everyday lives or take a risk and follow a dream.
“The Girl in the Cube,” performed at The Corner Playhouse on Nov. 3 through Nov. 5 and Nov. 10 through Nov. 13, used “Alice in Wonderland”-type characteristics to depict the average and boring life of Amanda, a secretary at a cat food company, played by senior Courtney Bandeko, as she attempts to sort out her life.
The audience watches as Amanda must face tough choices everyone can relate to, such as to stay with her boyfriend or leave him, quit her job or stay and forgive her mother or let her die holding a grudge.
“In this script, I played a lot with language and a lot with style and things like that and so it certainly has more dream-like qualities in the language,” Fotis said. “Almost all of the characters have a dream sequence that they go with, so it was something that I worked on specifically with the help of Dr. Crespy.”
Despite the serious life decisions the characters must make, “The Girl in the Cube” was written as a comedy and the audience responded to the script as such with the help of Amanda’s guides One, Two and Three and the Shepherd, who is the dream-world version of her boss, also played by David Crespy.
“The original idea came when I was working in a job that I hated and just sort of seeing how easy it would be to just kind of get stuck in your life instead of actually living it,” Fotis said. “So I quit that job and I came back to school, and I’m sort of using that impetus to sort of write something really weird about a simple idea.”
Because Fotis was able to pull from personal experiences, audience members could relate to the play.
Director Suzanne Burgoyne has directed many plays in Rhynsburger Theatre, but said she prefers directing performances like “The Girl in the Cube” at the Corner Playhouse because of its intimacy.
“Really, my heart is in the Corner Playhouse,” she said. “I really like the small black box setting where the actors are very close to the audience.”
Burgoyne said Fotis’ success is a point of pride for the writing performance program and as an individual.
“We take pride in our writing for performance program,” Burgoyne said. “We have two faculty members really who work on certain aspects of it, but also students get to work with both of them.”
Fotis was the winner of the Kennedy Center of American College Theater Festival’s Mark Twain Award last year for another play.
“When you win awards everyone thinks you’re suddenly a better person than you were the day before,” Fotis said. “It’s a great honor and as someone who fancies himself a comedy writer, anytime you win a Mark Twain award it’s pretty exciting. So it’s exciting, and I’m humbled.”
