Three Theatre Students Contribute to the Development of a New Play
Theatre is a collaborative art and the development of a new play is a collaborative process. In September 2024, a cast of professional actors, as well as a professional director, traveled to Sewanee for a three-day residency. That residency included an intensive workshop of Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing Elyzabeth Wilder’s latest play, The Untitled Measure for Measure Project, which explores issues of legacy, power, desire, and the policing of women's bodies.
Three students—Amelia Barakat, C’25; Sofia Tripoli, C’26; and Ivy Frances Moore, C’26—were selected to participate in the workshop, giving them an opportunity to experience the development of a new work firsthand. Barakat, a theatre major, was cast in the play. Moore, also a theatre major with an emphasis on directing, shadowed the director. Playwriting major Tripoli shadowed Wilder, tracking script changes and notes during the process.
When Wilder invited her students into this process, she made sure they knew that they were members of the
company and that their voices were welcome in discussions. Not only did this opportunity give them a chance to interact with theater professionals and observe the development of a new play, it also gave them a chance to use the skills gained at Sewanee to ask thoughtful questions and advocate for their ideas. During the workshop they were more than students, they were collaborators in the truest sense of the word.
The reading was performed in Sept. 2024 at the Tennessee Williams Center on the campus of the University of the South.
