Color & Light Theatre Ensemble, Act III Theatre Ensemble and Hooligan Theatre Company are hardly underground theater endeavours ““ from “Sweet Charity” to “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” their presence on campus is apparent. However, as little as three years ago, only one of these ensembles was in existence.
Color & Light and Act III were both started by students who are still attending UCLA, students who saw a void in the theater community and decided that it was their responsibility to fill it. To start a student group, all you need is three signatories and a statement; the entire process usually takes about five weeks.
“I wanted to start a group; that part’s easy,” said Joanna Syiek, fourth-year global studies student and founder of Color & Light Theatre Ensemble.
However, the life and times of a UCLA theater company are complicated, as any of their creators will acknowledge.
From funding to rehearsal space, none of the requisite supplies are easy for an ensemble to come up with. The only thing it’s not short of is actors.
Production costs range from $5,000 to nothing, venues range from Royce Hall to invite-only performances at student apartments.
There are representatives from the most and least traditional ends of the spectrum.
About the only thing student theater aficionados on campus have in common is a shared sense of participating in the beginning of something bigger.
Arranging a production is no easy task.
“Coming right out of high school, it’s been interesting to take the reins. In high school, all the production is in the hands of adults,” said Vika Stubblebine, a first-year theater student,
At UCLA, it’s all in the hands of students with all the difficulty that entails. Space is a major problem, as is funding and promotion. According to secondÂÂ-year theater student and member of Act III Ensemble Hunter Bird, a lack of rehearsal space presented challenges.
“We rehearsed a dance number on the top of Public Affairs at eight o’clock at night when it was freezing outside,” Bird said.
However, each type of theater offers its own distinct advantages. Hooligan is built to give non-theater majors a taste of putting on a theater production, Color & Light does community service for various groups, and Act III is built for people who intend to go into professional theater.
Theatrefest, an upcoming showcase for UCLA students, is a fourth option for independent productions.
Students like Roxie Perkins write and direct their own plays for the showcase, using actors they know and study rooms and dorm rooms to practice in.
“The whole thing has been really unexpected. I didn’t really expect to make something this year,” said Perkins.
Perkin’s interest in Theatrefest began when she and other students met to discuss their dissatisfaction with the current options for theater at UCLA.
Perkins decided to stage her own production.
It’s an affair so small that she and the actresses meet at the beginning of every week to compare schedules and decide on rehearsal time, but her play, “We Are Somebody,” shows at Theatrefest this June.
Perkins says running her own show gives her an opportunity to try a different type of rehearsal style, workshop-exposure, where she tries to show the actors the different worlds the protagonists came from.
Whether it is showcasing independent productions or starting a theater group, the theater community at UCLA is continuing to evolve, as there is no one way to go about a theatrical production.
“Make your own theater. Create opportunities for yourself.” Bird said.