It’s an easy thing to pick on a college theater department. For one, theater and other more "artistic" majors are not among the most popular majors at schools like Pomona and are rarely viewed by students as being "real" or serious studies. Further, there is a certain initial stigma attached to college theater which situates it, like athletics, in the very distant realm of the "theater people" or "the jocks." There’s the sense that college somehow ups the ante. I, for one, came to college assuming that roles in "college theater" productions or classes in "college theater" departments existed, not for people like me, but for the elite thespians, the stars of high school productions, whose dedication to their craft meant talent and professionalism far beyond what the average theater loving student would ever muster.

Not that any of these perceptions are necessarily true. Nor is it to say that the students involved in the theater department aren’t incredibly talented, driven performers–because most of them are. They have to be to choose what is in actuality one of the most demanding majors at Pomona.

No, the point is that the theater department, and more importantly the theater scene, is incredibly distanced from the college community. This distance breeds two things vitally destructive to a successful department: disdain and indifference.

Consequently, there is a lot of talk on campus about how much the theater here sucks. People roll their eyes in reference to shows, and too often would consider attending a performance only if they had a friend or someone close to them who was involved. And even these people, these students with a vested interest in liking what they see, rarely have much good to say.

Often there is good reason for this attitude. Shows in the past have been flat, or even downright awful. I am thinking in particular of the nightmarish (as I have heard) production of A Three Penny Opera and the astoundingly bad production of Six Characters in Search of an Author. These are both strong plays, with strong parts even if their length and intellectual bent makes them among the more difficult to stage. But even a sure-fire musical hit like Guy and Dolls lacked excitement.

Why does a department comprised of so many very talented actors and a professional budget continually disappoint? Why do the plays never match up to their production values? Why does hard work rarely pay off?

I do not propose to offer an "answer" here, nor is the following article meant to act in place of a proper review. Instead, I want to focus on a recent exception to trends noted above.

The exception is the department’s production of Alexander Galin’s Stars in the Morning Sky. Stars was directed by visiting professor Adrian Giurgea in Allen Studio theater. An ensemble piece about prostitutes cleared off the streets of Moscow in preparation for the 1980 Olympics, Stars in the Morning Sky brought two elements sorely lacking in most department productions: intensity and risk.

The performances given by the cast (Leslie Barnard ’04, Maeve Sullivan SC ’01, Camille Cettina ’01, J.B. Waterman ’01, Delavan Dickson ’04, Jessica Pohly ’02 and Athena Freedlander ’02) were huge factors in creating this atmosphere. Watching them, one could sense just how much effort, how much personal and imaginative exploration went into the creation of the characters. It was clear that Giurgea had expected, had demanded, that each actor give the best performances they had in them.

Gesture, speech patterns, posture all were there. For theater department mainstay Camille Cettina, this meant inhabiting the mind and body of an aging alcoholic prostitute, alternately playful, motherly and desperate, while for newcomer Leslie Barnard it meant understanding what it might be like to act as warden to women not much closer to the edge than herself.

True, performances all around were uneven, but moments of weakness were more than redeemed by some of the better performances I have seen. Every actor in this production had moments of greatness.

Why? What about Stars in the Morning Sky drew, finally, such tremendous performances?

Athena Freedlander, who played "Klara," an angry and sometimes viscous prostitute, described the rehearsal experience as "the most intense of my life."

She further noted that "Adrian is the most perceptive director I’ve ever worked with. He emphasized the idea of being ‘in the moment’ and would stop us whenever he felt that we were saying our lines ‘in general.’ Other directors here don’t do that." Moreover, she expressed her feelings that the three and a half week rehearsal period forced the actors to come together, to up the ante, so to speak.

For the audience, the show’s abbreviated rehearsal period lent a sense of urgency and of heightened adrenaline to the performance that complemented Galin’s play perfectly.

Unfortunately, this intensity, both from the actors in character and from the show itself, tended to accentuate moments when things did not work so smoothly. The rather large incidences of flubbed or uncertain lines and the momentary lapses in character were more striking in this show than they might have been in another. This, however, should be a measure of the show’s success, not of failure; the stronger the characters, the more noticeable their lapses. This is the risk of intense acting, and the reward. Both were felt strongly by audiences.

This same intensity and risk permeated the entire production. This was a show that was unafraid to have characters screaming and writhing, unafraid to splatter itself with fake blood and still aim for high seriousness. Admittedly, this at times made the show feel a bit like the theater scenes in the film Rushmore. Overall, however, the effect was to create excitement.

Perhaps, here is part of the "answer" after all: excitement, energy, intensity and risk. These factors often influence student productions, but rarely if ever make there way up to the department productions. The result is dissatisfaction all around–from performers, audiences, and perhaps most of all, from the majors themselves.

And yes, infusing life into a production is easier said than done. If it weren’t, department shows would be stronger, more college students would attend, and more interest would be generated all around.

But Stars in the Morning Sky, as well as many of the student productions, show that it can be done. The talent is there. The desire is there. Maybe it’s time that the theater department risks sacrificing a little of their affected professionalism, a little of their polish. The results, I think, would be well worth it.