With his latest work “Cannonball,” graduate
playwrighting student Jed Hayes aims not only to update
Sophocles’ Theban trilogy (in much the way “West Side
Story” breathed new life into “Romeo and
Juliet”), but also to overcome his fear of failure.
“What (the Department of Theater) tries to do is provide a
comfortable environment where it’s OK to fail ““ as
weird as that may seem ““ but you know when you get out in the
real world, it’s going to be really hard to fail. You are
going to fail and feel terrible; money is going to be lost. Whereas
here, it’s sort of like you fail and you move on and you
learn from it,” Hayes explained.
“Cannonball,” which runs this weekend, is the third
and final installment in the UCLA Department of Theater’s New
Play Festival, an opportunity held every spring quarter for
second-year graduate playwrighting students to see their plays
produced before entering the “real world.”
Each play is written during winter and spring of the
student’s first year, and the playwright then teams up with a
graduate theater directing student to produce the play.
This practical approach to writing is essential to the
department, according to Hayes, who said the playwrighting program
allows writers to see both sides of play development.
“There are times when you write a play and all
that’s going to happen is that you are going to sit around a
table and people are going to read it,” Hayes said.
“And then there’s times like this where you get to sit
and watch your play actually happen.”
Not only will Hayes see his play happen, but the festival also
fosters a rare opportunity for synergy between the playwright and
the director. In Hayes’ case, this joint effort includes
graduate theater directing student Brian Kite. Directors and actors
seldom have this chance to collaborate on plays in progress.
“We are still changing words and lines and adding
sections. … Suddenly, here is a new thing for your character, or
everything you’ve been thinking about for your character,
that’s gone now. By focusing on these things, they actually
have a good time with that ““ that’s part of the
process,” Kite said.
“This (process) is incredible for me,” Hayes said.
“Writing has always been very organic, and there’s only
so many times you can read your own play before you really just
have to see it happen.”
Hayes, who studied acting at Northern Arizona University, began
writing plays when he was unable to obtain what he considered
interesting roles.
At UCLA, he had a play up for last year’s Theaterfest
called “Elements of Society,” and also wrote
“Damage,” which was featured in last winter’s
Coppola One-Acts. Like “Cannonball,”
“Damage” explores how family dynamics shape
people’s lives.
“I’m always intrigued by (family). Nobody knows you
as well as your family does,” Hayes said. “Nobody can
get under your skin like your family can.”
“Cannonball” tells an updated version of the story
of Oedipus, this time as a young boy searching to free himself from
an obsession with his mother and abuse from his father. The boy
looks to escape his family by using boxing as an outlet. Boxing
grants him fame and fortune but not much comfort.
Hayes set the Greek classic in modern times, and his script is
very different from Sophocles’ masterpiece.
“It’s not always linear in the way it handles its
subjects, so the play often washes over you in its images and ideas
of this sort of age-old story,” Kite said.
Hayes, who says he writes something everyday, believes he has
connected with something if an idea he writes down cannot escape
him.
“I’ll see things very early in the day that’s
just sad or kind of shocking to me, and I can’t recover for
the whole day. I’m really just sort of thinking about it the
whole day, so that’s sort of how I filter out stories,”
he said.
According to Coco Kleppinger, a third-year theater acting
student who plays the mother character, audiences will be thinking
about “Cannonball” for awhile, too.
“I go for plays that scare me, and this one was definitely
out of my comfort zone,” Kleppinger said.
“I just kind of want to stir people up a bit,” Hayes
said.