By Sharon Hori
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
When theater student Marc Fellner had to sell tickets to a
production of “Romeo and Juliet” last summer, he vowed
not to sit behind a booth for eight hours in the mall. Instead, he
trekked to the bookstore next door and decided to read one classic
novel every three days.
Almost a year later, Fellner sits as co-director and co-producer
of the student production of Ray Bradbury’s sci-fi
“Fahrenheit 451,” the third novel he read the summer of
1999. The story, in which the futuristic government censors the
people’s sources of knowledge, enveloped a message that
Fellner waits to bring to life on stage this weekend at Macgowan
Hall.
“Everything I think is in theater,” Fellner said.
“No matter which novel I read, I see it performed on stage.
When I bought the book and opened it up, instantly the words were
incredibly beautiful. The story was amazingly complex and
absolutely ingenious.”
Bradbury’s tale, which he later transformed into a play,
depicts the government-controlled life of fireman Guy Montag, whose
responsibilities include the burning of books to cease the flow of
knowledge and prevent people’s tendency to think. Under the
instruction of fire chief Beatty, who obediently follows the system
of censorship, Montag enjoys watching the flames devour the books
at 451 degrees Fahrenheit.
Then enters Clarisse, a 17-year-old girl who tells Montag of a
past when society was not afraid. For once, Montag sees beyond the
huge TV-screen walls that invade families’ homes, numb their
brains and force-feed them virtual happiness. In struggling with
society’s loss of will, Montag attempts to redefine himself
as an individual, a thinker and a human being.
“The future of theater must be this mixed media because
we’re going to lose audience to TV and film,” Fellner
said. “The theater has the magic that those mediums will
never have, but those mediums have the infinite possibilities that
theater can’t do because you can’t use special effects
the way films can. There must be a way to get them together ““
the book was perfect.”
True, fitting the pieces of the story together required more
than just magic. With the help of second-year theater students D.J.
Gugenheim and Kathi Castoro, who agreed to help produce and direct
the show, Fellner sought a way to make Bradbury’s futuristic
imagery perform as well.
With 10-foot by 7-and-a-half-foot screens on loan from Daylight,
and film projectors donated by Panasonic, “Fahrenheit
451″ will encompass the futuristic TV screens that Bradbury
had intended on stage but could not imagine carrying out.
“When he had written it, there weren’t the
possibilities that there are today,” Fellner said. “His
(effects) were all done with lights. The cast would look out at the
audience and it was known that there was a screen there. But why
does that have to be? Why can’t the audience see what the
actors are seeing?”
In Saturday’s performance, the audience will look at the
three screens turned backdrops, from behind which the projectors
will show three different films “”mdash; close-ups, sequences to
forward the story, and most impressively, the computer animation
work of non-theater students.
Jeff Burke, an M.S. student in electrical engineering who works
for the film department’s research project, Hypermedia,
helped design the software that runs the video for the entire
performance. Burke worked with computer science students to write
the control code and the interface to trigger video for all three
projection screens from a single computer.
“This is our first real collaboration with theater,”
Burke said, adding that Hypermedia has previously designed media
installations normally seen in museums. “They made me more
interested in seeing this (technology) on stage than anywhere else.
That’s one of the reasons why I’ve spent so much time
on it.”
The premiere of a half-theater, half-technology performance
combines hybrid efforts credited to 11 actors and more than 20 crew
members, including grad students, computer science students, and
theater and film students and advisors.
“We have all these people trying to learn new things in an
academic environment to as professional a level as possible, and I
think that’s really unique,” Guggenheim said,
emphasizing that as a producer, he must supervise everyone’s
responsibilities.
The cast asserted that the technological bonuses provided by the
projectors and screens make the show half as easy to produce but
twice as monumental for being entirely student run and student
funded. The actors and the projectors feed off each other’s
onstage glow.
“D.J. sees it as a mixed-media production, I see it as a
theater production with a video background. The theater can exist
on its own but the video cannot stand alone,” said Bryce
Worcestor, a third-year film student and the show’s director
of photography.
Even with the projectors stealing half of the spotlight,
allowing the characters to interact with the TV walls,
Bradbury’s story leaves room for the theatrical
improvisation.
“I’m just lucky because Bradbury happened to write
God’s gift for actors in this monologue,” said Michael
Perl, a third-year theater student who plays the role of fire chief
Beatty. “Bradbury’s a fantastic writer; the work has
been done for the actors already. When you have a great script,
what more could you want?”
Grant Peterson, a second-year theater student who plays the
protagonist, Montag, added that the story’s numbed-down
humanity is as big of a problem as it was 40 years ago when
Bradbury first conceived the idea.
“TV thinks for us,” Peterson said. “We just
watch it and we zone out, everything’s so fast paced and we
forget who we are. The play reminds us of the humanity we’re
missing out when we go for the quick-fix, fast-food society.
That’s where it’s a real good slap in the face because
it makes you realize what we’re taking for
granted.”
Stumbling through late-night rehearsals, tech runs and
last-minute kinks, the cast remains exhausted yet anticipative.
“I don’t think I’ve gotten sleep in a very
long time, come to think of it,” laughed Castoro. “We
all just sit around and rehearse while losing our minds
together.”
And they haven’t even had time to switch on the TV.
THEATER: “Fahrenheit 451″ will be playing at 8 p.m.
May 6 and 13 and at 2 and 7:30 p.m. May 7 and 14 at Macgowan 1340.
Pre-sale tickets are $7 for adults and $5 for students and senior
citizens. At the door, tickets are available one hour before show
times at $10 for adults and $7 for students and senior citizens.
For tickets, call D.J. Gugenheim at (310) 497-5998 or e-mail him
candj@ucla.edu.