By Toni Snyder
The McPherson College Theatre Department’s season drew to a close on March 10th with “Another Antigone.” “Another Antigone” is a play by A.R. Gurney about a college student who tries to submit an essay based off of “Antigone,” but gets rejected by her professor. In a scramble to graduate on time, she decides to put it on as a play for her school in an attempt to get credit for her work.
This show was a small cast that included Erin Fralik (Junior), Tanner Trigg (Sophomore), Ashley Burch (Junior), Mark Sizemore (Freshman), and was managed by Bailey Short (Senior). The show began on March 8th with a showing specifically for McPherson College staff and students, followed by showings on the 9th and 10th in Mingenback Theatre. This show was unique because of the black box style performance. The audience was seated in bleacher type seating on the stage around three sides of the set.
“The hardest part about putting on this show was trying to portray a real person while trying to perform for everybody in the audience,” said Freshman Mark Sizemore, “If I could redo this show I would probably try to re-evaluate my character better so that I would have a stronger performance overall.”
This show was originally chosen as a 40-year anniversary of the departments first-nighter program. When the department first began serving the dinners to the first-nighter members in 1978, they did the show “Antigone” with 30 members as part of the dinner. 40 years later, they decided it would be a great idea to put on “Another Antigone”! When Rick Tyler announced his retirement, the show also became a celebration for his time at MC.
When asked his opinion of this show, Director Jd Bowman said: “It’s always great in educational theatre because everybody has a chance to learn different aspects of their acting abilities, and how to use them on stage. It’s also an amazing opportunity for people to take risks! I think that everybody involved successfully took risks on and off stage. Rick Tyler tried something new with the marble floor painting, Courtney Weesner ran lights for her first time, Ashley and Erin had never done that kind of accent before, and Tanner had never performed in a drama here on campus, so it was kind of a risk for him to get emotional and vulnerable on the stage. For me, risk-taking is an ultimate goal, so I would consider this show successful in that aspect.”
