This week, JustArts talked with Alison Thvedt '15, who directed Hillel Theater Group's production of The Children's Hour, which was performed this weekend.

JustArts: Would you tell us about you previous theater experience at Brandeis?

Alison Thvedt: I am minoring in Theater Arts here. I have acted in shows before-I did the Vagina Monologues both years, freshman year and last year. I was in a senior thesis [play] about Rachel Carson, and I was also in Into the Woods last fall. I've just been acting before this semester in undergraduate theater.

JA: I understand that this was your first directorial effort. What have you learned from the experience of directing that is different from acting in a production?

AT: I think the biggest thing is the amount of time that goes into it. I knew it would be a big time commitment, but it was even bigger than I thought it would be. You have to know the play really well. I like directing because I really got to go into each character and work with the actors on each character. Because, in acting, you're mainly focused on your own character and that character's specific relationships with others, whereas I get to see all the relationships and how they intertwine and intermingle ... I don't get to personally go so deeply into each character.

JA: How did you select The Children's Hour for performance?

AT: Well, I had to propose it. In the spring, there were proposals for each of the undergraduate theater groups. I actually acted in The Children's Hour in high school, so I knew the play, and I took a directing class last spring and I really liked it-so I thought, "oh! I'll propose this play, I'm familiar with it." I proposed it to HTG because Lillian Hellman [the playwright] is Jewish, so, since I had that play in mind, I decided to propose it to HTG instead of other theater groups.

I really like The Children's Hour because it's a really female-centric play. There are 12 female roles and two males, at least in my production ... And that's getting more common, but it's still not very common to have so many females versus males. Especially in undergraduate theater, and in theater in general, there's an imbalance of women and men.

JA: There was some really heavy content in the play. Would you talk a bit about the themes at work and how the actors engaged with them?

AT: One thing I tried to do was I tried to have a few nights of rehearsal where we would forget about blocking, forget about just going through lines or going through moments and just focus on themes, and just forming connections between the actors, and not necessarily between the characters. One theme is love, regardless of whether it's heterosexual or homosexual or familial, like between the grandmother or granddaughter.

I had them write love letters to a character, to someone else in the play, and I also had them write a hate letter. That was a really cool exercise, and I had them read them in small groups to each other, and getting into those was really awesome. I also discovered things about characters in the play that I wouldn't have thought of. ...We did bring up the themes of homosexuality, and also preadolescent and adolescent sexuality.

JA: What do you hope that audiences took home with them after watching?

AT: I chose to set the play in the present because I think, even though the specific events like someone being sued for spreading a rumor about someone being gay wouldn't happen, I think, in our legal system today. But the general events-people's lives being ruined through rumor, people acting in self-righteousness, people spreading rumors without even knowing if there's any legitimacy behind the rumors -all of these things still happen.

People still commit suicide because they're bullied, for being gay, for being queer, transgender, anything. That still happens. I'm sure there are communities that would still take their kids out of school if they found out their teachers were gay. ... I think just remembering that things like this still happen, and recognizing that there's truth in it.

-Rachel Hughes
*