Sarah Malkin ‘00 is mad at my editor. Like, really mad: she’s on her way towards the end of a very convincing, if very theatrical (and very profane), tirade directed at him: "Fuck," she says, frustrated, and with that, it’s over. This is Saturday afternoon, October 9: her play opens in a little less than two weeks, and things have begun to get stressful. Well, let’s be fair: things are now more stressful.

Malkin’s tension is understandable. Not only is it above one hundred degrees for the second day in a row, but around us, on the southernmost end of Seaver Theatre’s courtyard, the cast and crew of the play she’s directing, Craig Lucas’ "Blue Window," are painting furniture. When she’s done chewing out Dan, she goes back to what she was doing before our arrival: supervising the hanging of lights in a side-theater at Seaver. For students working on a student-produced play, there is little time for self-importance or anger. Or, like, dinner. There is, basically, little time for anything not having to do with the play.

Dan May Painting the town blue, and the set too: "Blue Window" cast members are also "Blue Window" crew members.

This director, these actors, stage managers, and the assorted supporting players that make producing plays possible are working very hard, and are working more or less without a net; this production, through Bottom Line Theater (which has a small amount of funding from the Theater Department, but, Malkin said, "only gives out what [funds] we think we’ll make back"), has been both helped and harmed (most recently through some squabbles over practice space) by the Theater Department. Overall, though, this production is in the hands of its director, actors, and crew: the department is not going to bail them out if problems emerge, or pay for costumes, or hang lights, or paint that furniture (sky blue, if you were wondering).

Student-produced plays offer actors and directors an opportunity to work on material of their choice, but the freedom that comes from working outside of the sometimes puzzling choices of the Theater Department (not to disrespect whoever came up with setting Threepenny Opera in colonial India) comes with the desperation and heightened urgency that defines "Do It Yourself" projects. Malkin needed those pictures in last week’s TSL to raise the play’s profile, and due to photographic and layout problems, they weren’t there. That is why she’s pissed off.

In my dealings with her over the next few days, this anger seems to give way to a sort of weary solicitude. Malkin clearly wants this production to be a success, and part of that happening is based on you reading this article. I’m sure there are things she would rather do than talk to an equally distracted TSL staffer on a Monday night, especially after a five-hour rehearsal at Seaver, but she manages to muster what charm hasn’t been worn away by stress and its attendant hardships ("I have three minutes to eat dinner and get back to the rehearsal," she told me outside Frank this Monday) when facing down the prospect. "I really want to talk about this," she says, and she’s convincing enough, or legitimately desperate enough, that I believe her. We make a date to talk later on, after eleven pm, while I’m at work. If she’s done with rehearsal by then.

She is not. I am awakened Tuesday morning, deadline day, by a phone call from Malkin: it is 8:45 am, and she has time to talk now. The rehearsal had run until about 12:30 am, which is to say that it lasted six and one-half hours. Which is an hour and a half longer than Malkin slept last night: "I can’t really sleep," she says casually. Later on she reveals the dream that jolted her awake this morning: "I woke up thinking the theater was burning down. And I’d have to go down and save everything." She laughs and I laugh, but it feels a good deal less funny the more I think about it. If the furniture painting piqued my interest in why someone would do this to themself, to open their dreams to the ravages of day-to-day stress, the dream shocked me: this was evidently even more difficult, and more difficult to understand, than I’d thought.

The play, at least what I saw of it through rehearsals, is quite good. "Blue Window," written in 1984, is a well-regarded and frequently performed work by a writer who, if he’s had a hard time in Hollywood (the films of Prelude to a Kiss and Reckless didn’t get much critical or commercial love), has long been seen as one of American theater’s strongest voices. In "Blue Window," Lucas integrates experimental elements (scenes taking place in different locations occur simultaneously onstage, and there is an unexpected break in which a previously quiet character breaks into song while the action onstage freezes) with smart, rhythmic, naturalistic dialogue and characters (guests, of varying happiness, at a cocktail party) that are both complex and identifiable. Malkin was particularly effusive about the dialogue: "What I like about it," she said, "is that it’s very modern, but it’s not [as expressionistic as that of David] Mamet. I think these characters are a lot more appealing." Ariane Balizet ‘00, who plays Emily (the one who sings), is similarly enthusiastic: "Since I started college, all I’ve done is student theatre, and this is far and away the best production I’ve been involved with. The play is incredible."

And it’s hard to imagine those involved with the production doing all the work that has and will be done on "Blue Window" if they didn’t believe in it. The thing that I keep coming back to, though, is wondering why it is so hard for them to find satisfaction (i.e. productions they are interested in and roles they want) within the Theater Department.

The endless hours of work that the cast/crew has put in has clearly been difficult (outside of rehearsals, Balizet estimates more than twenty hours of time spent painting sets, hanging lights, and all the other treats that come with doing theater type things), but those I talked to clearly seem to think it’s worth it. The first "it" in that sentence being art they care about, and the second "it" being the hardships and bullshit that come from working outside a department that has traditionally been mired in internecine politics. Balizet seized upon what I meant immediately: "If you’re talking about department productions, I mean, the people in "Guys and Dolls" (a department production) spend two hours standing around getting their wrist-to-armpit ratios measured for costumes before they even started rehearsing." What was left out of that statement defined the DIY pride those involved with "Blue Window" clearly felt: what work they did, they did for themselves, by themselves.

Still, no one I talked to was quite able to articulate the reasons why they put themselves through these hardships. "I love theater so much, and I like the challenge," Malkin began, "but it seems kind of cheesy and ridiculous to talk about. I just guess, to me, that theater is where it happens." And where it happened for me, where I got a glance at the answer to my question, was at rehearsal.

I went to take some of the photographs for this article, and I wandered into the rehearsal, which at that time was approaching the five-hour mark, to find the cast intensely running through a bit of after-three-drinks party chatter. I tried to make myself as unobtrusive as possible, and generally the actors ignored my presence (it’s not that hard, most people do it), but something about it clicked in me, something about what is missing from rehearsals, from those long and repetitive evenings of getting something right.

It doesn’t matter, I guess, that no one I talked to quite said what I wanted them to say about theater being a dialogue between actor and audience. They knew it as well as I knew it, and maybe articulating it would’ve ruined whatever quiet magic it is that brings people to theater when they might be doing something easier. The force probably sounds something like applause, and I suspect, if the genuine, if sleep-deprived, passion Malkin exudes or the quiet pride Balizet voiced are any indication, that it is more powerful than I could’ve imagined.

Check out "Blue Window" in the Large Studio at Seaver Theater, Thursday October 21 through Sunday October 24. Thursday, Friday and Saturday shows are at 8 pm, and at 2 pm on Sunday. Tickets are two dollars, and can (and should: these plays sell out) be reserved at x74984.