Vaqueros to present original plays
Melody Hernandez (left), a theatre performance senior, and Ariana Cruz, a theatre performance junior, rehearse April 16 for the 10-Minute Play Festival in the UTRGV Theater Studio on the Edinburg campus. The festival will take place from 7 to 10 p.m. May 1 and 2. Angel Ballesteros/THE RIDER
UTRGV students will present the 10-Minute Play Festival to showcase their original works written in the English 4351 advanced creative writing: workshop in playwriting course taught by Robert Moreira, a lecturer in the creative writing program.
The plays will be performed from 7 to 10 p.m. May 1 and 2 in Liberal Arts Building South Studio Theater Room 107 on the Edinburg campus. The event is free and open to the public.
Moreira said the event is free and is a “culmination” of the course.
“So, we take the whole semester to revise and talk about the disparate elements of playwriting, and then they put together their own play,” he said.
The play festival is held every spring when the course is offered.
Linda Chapman, a mass communication, theatre and film production senior and co-director of the play festival, said presenting her own play has helped her see the difference between directing a film and a play.
“All of us will get the experience,” Chapman said. “We’ll be able to put on our resumes that we got to direct a play.”
She said the original plays can be from a personal experience or anything the student wants to write about.
“[It is] just about seeing how creative a person can be in making, like, your script come to life,” Chapman said.
Moreira said two of the requirements for the plays are to have at least two characters with conflict between them.
He said students go over the Freytag pyramid, “which kind of outlines the steps of a play.”
The second requirement is that each play must be 10-minutes long, according to Moreira.
“So I kind of wanted to see that format so that [students] can see how in a 10-minute play you kind of have to have all of those elements working in tandem in order for your audience to feel, like, you know, they’ve seen something of substance,” he said.
Chapman recommends taking a creative writing course.
“There’s such a pride in being able to write a story and see it up on stage and then people coming up to you, not just to compliment your ego, but to tell you what you made it into, like your story and the characters, and I’ve been telling people to take [the course],” she said.
Tomas Garcia, an English senior with a concentration in creative writing, said the course gives students the opportunity to see what works with their performance.
“It’s giving everyone an opportunity to … put their performance out there and kind of, like, see what works and what doesn’t work with it and improve the story overall,” Garcia said.
The Rider asked the students and lecturer how taking the playwriting course would benefit the students in the future.
“You have to work with other people and it’s a great experience for them to see what can happen when, you know, minds get together and work on a creative project,” Moreira said.
Chapman said it is a way to “pay attention” to actors, “and you have to be able to keep track of everybody, be in charge of everybody, see what props you need all of a sudden, what costumes.”
Garcia said it has helped him feel more “comfortable” in directing and being part of a production.
“Without this class, I just have it written and I wouldn’t put it out anywhere,” he said.
Bryan Espinoza, an English junior, said the class helped him understand the “efforts and work” that goes into performing.
“It’s really showed me a lot and has really shown me that it’s harder than it looks,” Espinoza said. “It’s helped me as a student more so in the sense that I have to work out my time management more.”
Garcia recommends the class to students who are interested in writing.
“Even if they prefer just writing like a novel or a television script, it’s still a good experience,” he said.
Moreira said family, friends and the community are invited to attend the festival.
“So, usually, the theater will be full with family members, but, definitely, we want other people to come and, you know, prospective students, if they want to come see,” he said.
