This week, justArts spoke with Charlie Madison ’15, who has written his own play, Lost Girls. Madison will direct the play which will be which will be performed by Brandeis Ensemble Theater in November.

JustArts: Can you tell me a little about your play, Lost Girls?

Charlie Madison: Lost Girls came to fruition out of this running theme of the past two years just noticing the double standards of gender in society ... It’s a about a girl, Danielle—it’s a dream, so it’s a little kooky. She gets dropped in this barren place, a completely black space, and in it exists certain mystical things. Like the wind has this omniscient presence. There’s this light that heals her wounds. Sci-fi sh*t. While she’s in there, she discovers she’s with these three other women and they are complacent, just sitting there day in and day out. And [Danielle says], ‘No, I want to get out of here, we’re going to find a way out.’ They, through a series of tasks and trials and tribulations, get out of the space.

JA: How long did it take you to write?

CM: I wrote a seven page sample for [Brandeis Theater Ensemble] voting proposals last April. Then everybody was like, ‘the play’s written right?’ And I was like, ‘Um, well, no.’ And I also have a thesis going up in the spring through the [Senior Arts Theater Festival], so I’m kind of like, ‘what is sleep?’ I wrote [Lost Girls] all summer. I interned at Central Square Theater in Cambridge, and I also work at Citizen’s Bank as a teller part-time, so I would go from one to the other throughout the week. After I would come home, I would be exhausted, but I had to write—so it was through long hours throughout the summer.

JA: Have you started working on the actual production? I know you’re directing it.

CM: Funny you should ask that. Today is the Activities Fair and common audition signups [for the Undergraduate Theater Collective]. I had my first meeting with my main staff—my producer and stage manager. All summer it was sort of me sitting in my room thinking about [Lost Girls] in abstract terms. Now it’s schedules, who’s doing what, the budget. It’s awesome and it’s so exciting—a tiny bit terrifying.

JA: Do you anticipate any problems having written the play, as well as directing it? What do you think that’s going to be like?

CM: I’m not the strongest writer, [I’m] sort of self aware about that. But I do like to think that I have some talent as a writer. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be going up in the theater. So what I would like to do is make up for the weaknesses in the play through physical direction. Bertolt Brecht had this thing called the Brecht test, where you could look at a play without hearing anything and understand the whole thing just through visuals. That’s just a concept, it’s not an actual litmus test, but I really would like to tell the story just as strongly and if anything make up for some holes in the plot through direction.

JA: What is one message you want people to get out of it?

CM: There’s definitely one message I’ve been thinking about for a while. When you see somebody, and they fit certain characteristics, like they are a sorority girl or they are a math nerd, don’t make assumptions. You don’t know about people’s lives. A lot of negative prevalent situations in our society are a result of assumptions.

JA: Do you plan on doing something like this in the future after you graduate?

CM: I do! For a while I sent out the play to my friends and family asking for edits and revisions and didn’t really get anything cause it was summer. And since I’m writing my thesis, I’m already working on that now, and so straddling the two is so time-consuming that I’ve shifted from wanting to move it forward to a festival, to thinking you have many other stories to tell, and this is kind of a broad story, and there are diverse characters that don’t really fit in the best way, but I was commissioned to write this when I wrote the sample. So while I do value it, I am really looking forward to moving on to something else with a clear vision and editing it.But regardless, I am so excited about Lost Girls and putting it on its feet.