The Student Organization for Undergraduate Playwrights, or SOUP, provides opportunities for all undergraduates in the Division of Theater as an outlet for undergraduate original work.
When among members of the theater department, if someone is talking about “soup,” they probably don’t mean Campbell’s or Progresso.
They’re talking about SOUP, or the Student Organization for Undergraduate Playwrights. SOUP will have its final show of the semester Saturday in the Hahne Theater in Kantner Hall.
The show is titled “SOUP: The Untold Stories” in which most of the playwrights are handpicking plays from their repertoires. Each play ranges from five to 20 minutes in length.
“They’re all pretty different. It adds a little bit of variety,” said Erin Baker, president of SOUP and a senior studying playwriting. “You don’t know what to expect when you come in.”
Before the plays begin, a five-minute video — with a similar feel to VH1’s Behind The Music — will give a behind the scenes look at SOUP and those involved with it.
Baker chose a play she wrote in five minutes during a classroom activity last year.
Pulling from old work allowed the undergraduate playwrights to focus more on the production aspect of the show — all to the good fortune of Hayley Trachtenberg, a freshman studying theater.
Trachtenberg’s play is about a group of friends discovering the literal string in string theory. In it, she needs a string to levitate and a portal to be simulated on stage.
“It’s the most tech-heavy show I’ve ever written,” she said.
Understanding the production side of a show is very important to playwrights because they often have to produce their own work, Baker said.
“Unless you put forth the effort to produce your own play, it won’t happen,” said Hope Wondowsky, a 2014 alumna, who is returning for Saturday’s show. “SOUP is essential because that was the way we could produce work unless you signed up for a Lab show, which takes months and months.”
Wondowsky was the president of SOUP for two years and said she is amazed at the growth she has seen in the organization this year.
Wondowsky said she encourages people to come because SOUP shows allow audience members to see a playwright’s work when he or she is just at the start of a career versus Midnight Madness, which showcases the seasoned graduate playwrights’ work.
As for next semester, Baker said people’s busier schedules make it harder to produce shows, however SOUP will have set performance dates for the spring before winter break.
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