New troupe debuts ‘Crimes of the Heart’

Seven UCLA theater students are taking a risk with site-specific theater and no professional advisement and hoping it pays off.

Presenting a site-specific production of “Crimes of the Heart” at 449 Landfair Ave. on Friday and Saturday, The Treehouse Theater Company is a group of seven theater students at UCLA who created their own production company outside the bounds of the school’s theater department. This is the company’s first production, and it has plans to continue with more site-specific plays.

Information on tickets is available on the company’s Facebook event page.

Site–specific theater is a type of theater in which the performance takes place offstage at a location where the scene would occur in reality. The Treehouse Theater Company’s production will occur in a cast member’s apartment, as the play is set in the main characters’ house.

After appealing to many preexisting theater companies on campus, Gaston Perez, a third-year theater student and director of “Crimes of the Heart,” had problems finding a company to pick up his production, as the companies’ procedures for casting and directing differed from Perez’s preexisting package. Perez then had the idea to do the play as a site-specific production, and The Treehouse Theater Company and its production of “Crimes of the Heart” were born.

“Crimes of the Heart” is the story of three sisters: Lenny, Meg and Babe. At the play’s opening the audience learns that the sisters’ father abandoned them and that, during their childrood, their mother hanged herself along with the family’s cat. As adults, they are all reunited in their childhood home and forced to face issues they have avoided because Babe, the youngest sister, has just shot and murdered her abusive husband.

When Perez was assigned a project during fall quarter to cast and direct a scene for his directing realism class, he chose “Crimes of the Heart.”

Perez said he originally chose “Crimes of the Heart” with the intention to provide more female leading roles than are normally available to the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television students, as this number is typically low, despite the school having a majority of female students.

“After the project was finished everyone felt like they couldn’t shake the characters,” said Valentina Gehley, a third-year theater student who plays the eldest sister, Lenny, in the production. “They weren’t done with what they had started.”

“Crimes of the Heart” was one of the first plays to advocate for women’s rights in domestic abuse cases. A major facet of the plot is Babe’s relationship with her abusive husband, which resulted in his muder before the play begins.

“It was one of the first shows to put a powerful woman on stage, and I thought this was the perfect play to show the power of female performers,” Perez said.

Angela Giarratana, a second-year theater student who plays the youngest sister, Babe, in the production, said that the cast members were excited and proud of their production because they were doing it completely independently, which made it more precious to them.

The company’s seven students have raised money for props by selling peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on Bruin Walk, although, because of the nature of site-specific theater, they have not had to buy many props and have been able to use furniture and objects already present in the apartment.

Lila Gavares, a second-year theater student who plays Chick Boyle, said the production has provided a chance to explore her passion for theater in ways that she hasn’t been able to in the classroom.

“I feel like this year I haven’t gotten the acting classes that I’ve wanted … they just don’t light my fire,” Gavares said. “But in the first week of rehearsal (for ‘Crimes of the Heart’), I felt that passion for acting again.”

Unlike a lot of other plays currently in production that are created and performed only for patrons of the art, site-specific theater is more relatable and can be enjoyed by those who are less familiar with theater as well, Perez said.

Because of how passionate the cast and crew has been about this project, Perez said the company wants to continue site–specific theater at UCLA and beyond.

“We’re naming ourselves The Treehouse Theater Company because we are hoping to spark a movement here (at UCLA) and create a theater company that we can be members of,” Perez said. “We want this to be something we can take out into the professional world.”