Bringing Words to Life
Alicia Haymer shares her work for the stage.
At last Thursday’s event, Alicia Haymer's play, Heavy. was performed as a staged reading. Toriya (Tori) Buford directed the play, and six MTSU students acted in it. With so much talent in one room, it was no surprise that the reading came to life as soon as it began.
I think this is the beauty of theatre. As a playwright, you have this idea, you write it, and you have a general sense of how you have it set up in your mind. But then, when the directors and actors add their own creativity, it becomes a living, breathing piece. You get to see it all come together in a unified way for the first time. Your play is no longer words sitting on a page but rather a real-life experience.
When I spoke to Alicia before the event, she expressed how excited she was to be able to experience it live and in person. She said seeing the script was going to give her another avenue to identify what worked about the play, and what needed to be tweaked.
As a playwright myself, I can totally relate to how valuable a staged reading can be. It’s like getting to edit your work through a different lens. At times, I have become engrossed in the reading, and then been pulled out of it because a line doesn’t work, or I finally realize what a character really means to say. It is an experience unique to playwrights and screenwriters, and I find it to be one of the most instrumental parts of bringing a play to life. You get to find out if you have been able to turn your characters into real human beings.
And I would say Alicia has achieved exactly that through her technique and skill. I would also add that the cast and the director built onto the brilliancy of the story. Tori said at the talkback, “It was easy for me to pick out moments that needed to be big moments.” What a key point! In order to have big moments, you also have to have little moments. Tori was able to craft this reading so that everything added to the story, whether it was big or small.
Big moments that stuck out to me were Junior’s songs performed by Jordan Gray. Jordon encapsulated the overwhelming emotion of the despaired character. We can see Junior’s slow breakdown through these intimate moments. Within these, Junior is singing alone until the very end when his family decides to come together to embark on a new beginning. Each individual song may be a small piece of the story; however, when it is compiled together with the lonely, broken parts of Junior, these scenes complete the story.
In the talkback, Alicia said, “You have to get out of the way and let art, art.” I think she has been able to accomplish exactly that in this play. In Process was honored to be part of the creative process for Heavy, and look forward to seeing it produced by the Actors Bridge Ensemble next year: April 14th-16th, 20th–23rd.
“The Afterthought” is a weekly column by In Process Intern Lillian Reid.
