On Stage: Performing Arts at our Oneonta Campuses by Rachel Frick Cardelle

‘SNAP’ Pokes Fun at, Challenges the Arts Industry

“SNAP,” a play written by Sarah Burry and directed by Barbara Kahl, will be showing at Hartwick College’s Lab Theatre March 5-8. For one of the students involved, Jas Stuchel, this show serves as their senior thesis, a requirement for Hartwick College theater majors. I had no idea what it meant that the show was someone’s senior thesis, so I sat down with Jas to talk about the production, then I attended a rehearsal.

Both experiences reminded me of the old adage, “the show must go on,” for both were walloped by the flu that’s been going around and yet both were able to move forward. I interviewed Jas on Zoom, as they were too sick to meet in person, and the Friday that I went to the rehearsal was the first time in almost a week that the director had been able to assemble the bulk of the cast for a run-through of the show. Both were fun experiences and amazingly coherent, unlike yours truly when I’ve been struck by the flu.

The rehearsal was a full, fast run-through of the show, meaning lines were said faster than usual and there was no stopping to discuss how something would be said, or how movement might happen, or what was working and what wasn’t. Remembering that the flu hit this production just as the actors were supposed to be off-book (no script in hand, all lines fully memorized), that the stage manager had to read one of the roles because that actor was still sick, and that there was a puppy (guide dog in training) present who showed no interest in the theater arts, the rehearsal went surprisingly smoothly.

The play takes place behind the scenes of a college production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Two of the crew members fall for one another, and their bonding begins from a shared sense of humor about the different “characters” and special setting of the show. (The director has decided to place this production in Atlantis.) As they get closer, though, they discover they also share the experience of having been sexually assaulted during their time in the theater. With this discovery, they find they can’t agree on how best to handle the experience, bringing discord to their new-found romance.

Prior to the rehearsal, when I spoke to Jas, I asked them to help me understand what it means that this show is their “senior thesis.”

Jas explained, “So, for Hartwick College the senior thesis in theater arts requires either we choose the play or we are part of one of the main stage plays put on by our faculty directors. [Then] we have to do two aspects of theater to complete our thesis. I am doing acting and sound design. I also did some dramaturgy work with the playwright.”

[Before you ask, I looked up ‘dramaturgy’ and here is the best definition I found, from a MasterClass article: Dramaturgy is the study and practice of using dramatic composition to represent a scene on stage in performances, world-building, and historical contexts. The etymology of “dramaturgy” comes from the Greek word “dramatourgía,” meaning “action of a play.”… Dramaturgy is an in-depth study of the work that playwrights, screenwriters, and directors create. The article goes on to explain that dramaturgs study dramatic productions, perform script analysis, and conduct research for directors and production teams.]

“My part in it was working with the playwright herself [Burry] to kind of make some edits so it would fit our theater program better, as well as understanding her background on writing it,” Jas continued. “I found this play on a website called New Play Exchange, so this will be the first time this play has ever been produced. She’s had some plays produced before, but it’s mostly her fantasy work that gets noticed, as opposed to a play like ‘SNAP.’”

As we moved on to discuss the sound design, Jas shared they had done sound design once before during their college career.

“I am finding the music that’s going to play for our pre-show and our post-show and our bows, things like that. It’s also transition music during set changes. We have an intimacy scene, so we’re putting underlying music to accompany that. There’s one really fun scene that I get to put on some badass ‘80s rock for, where my character, Tristan, is pretending to fight someone in her head. So I get to put on some rock music during that…I haven’t chosen the song yet for that scene. I’m definitely looking at AC/DC, that type of thing.”

One aspect that intrigued me about this production was that for their senior thesis Jas had chosen a play that had never been produced and tested before, one that required Jas to sort through a database such as New Play Exchange, described as “… the world’s largest digital library of scripts by living writers.”

Jas laughingly told me that picking the play was “a bit of a comedically long process…” and I heard in that description that this was a student who had chosen an onerous path to get this just right. I suspect had this been me as a college student, I would have picked the path of least resistance, settling for “good enough” rather than “just right.”

“I chose it because it was relatable to me as a theater student—the almost pessimistic take Tristan has around the theater world based on her experiences in it, and it kind of pokes fun at being a theater student,” Jas said. “But I also chose it because it has this important message about sexual assault in the arts industry, and how it is incredibly common in the arts industry to not report when very serious things like that happen.

“It can completely mess up your career and mess up the other side’s career,” Jas continued. “So the fact that the two lead characters have this battle of, do I report or don’t I report? And what does that mean to do either of those things? Not every case of sexual assault or rape is the same. There’s not a right answer on [whether] to report or not to report. I felt that was an important story to bring to the stage.”

Jas and I also talked about their decision to play Tristan as a woman, as Burry leaves it up to the production whether Tristan is non-binary or female.

“I chose to play Tristan as a woman because of the prevalence of the gender gap that exists in the arts industry, with men who are in charge taking power over the younger, more naïve women who are just entering the industry,” Jas continued. “I’ll never claim it’s an easy role to step into, but Tristan says something about how actors take on a writer’s pain and, while it’s not our exact experience that we’re taking on, we do it so that we lighten the load of the pain.

“When I act in these serious shows, I do it to lighten that load, to let people see these stories on stage, things they’ve gone through… I do it in order to show that raw side of it, that emotion behind these things that are usually kept behind closed doors,” Jas said.

In this final part, I felt Jas touched on something fundamental about why it is so satisfying to go to the theater. So, I look forward to seeing the play, with sets and costumes and a full, healthy cast. I look forward to finding out which badass ‘80s rock song Jas chooses. And I look forward to having this group of actors lighten my load.  

Hartwick College offers “SNAP,” a play by Sarah Burry directed by Barbara Kahl, March 5-8 at 8 p.m. in the Lab Theatre, located in the basement of Bresee Hall.

Next up: “On the Verge or The Geography of Learning” a play by Eric Overmyer, at Hartwick College, April 9-12.

Rachel Frick Cardelle covers performing arts at SUNY Oneonta and Hartwick College.