Audience members were plunged into perdition for last weekend’s showings of “No Exit”.
Directed by senior Acting/Directing (A/D) student C.W. Hellen, “No Exit” featured a small cast: Ella Joseph, Grace Richardson, Lorenzo Saucedo and Riley Chang.
The show centers around three damned souls who realize their eternal punishment is coexistence with each other rather than physical torture. It sparks questions about morality and perception—for both the characters and the audience.
In a talkback after the Saturday night performance, Hellen and guest speaker David Miller discussed the themes of the show.
“A big thing that this play is concerned with is, where is that personal responsibility line drawn? […] How much of you is social conditioning? How much of you is your circumstance?” Hellen said. “Are those differences a part of your authentic self?”
The pair also discussed the way that playwright Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy influenced his writing.
“The definition that Sartre has is you make a decision based on what is best in the broadest context. You look at humanity, you’re not making individual choices because it feels good […] So it’s this framework against which the play is set,” Miller said.
In light of the entrenchment of the show in these philosophical concerns, Hellen said his most important consideration was that the actors deeply understood their characters’ headspace.
“The philosophy is important, but when working on the play if you [..] get bogged down [in that], I think you lose a lot of the acting,” said Hellen. “Rather than the philosophy, [I focused] more on the actual human connections that are happening.”
The tension amongst the characters in the play was amplified by a set created to feel intentionally uncomfortable. Hellen described the design as intentionally generating “a sort of anxiety”.
In addition to his role as “Boy”, junior A/D and Design/Tech student Riley Chang designed the set.
“A lot of the parameters for the set were already written out, like the angles and the purposefulness of everything but I wanted to be able to tie it all together with a spooky, hellish vibe to allude to the themes of text,” said Chang.
For a show like “No Exit”, close quarters are a perk. The use of the Mesa Experimental Theater (MET), often colloquially referred to as the “Black Box,” lent a more intimate feel to the performance given the proximity to the performers.
Though “No Exit”’s run has concluded, there are currently two more theatre productions slated for the rest of the spring semester. “Ride the Cyclone” and “39 Steps” start showings on Feb. 27 and April 24 respectively.
