The Trinity University Theatre department staged “Fefu and Her Friends” from Friday, April 12, to Saturday, April 20. This was their last mainstage production of the 2023-24 season.
Written by María Irene Fornés, this three-act play follows a group of friends spending the day together in Fefu’s house. As personal secrets get revealed and tensions arise among the group, the uneventful day takes a surreal turn. The second act famously has an interactive house set in which the audience can walk around and see several individual scenes happening throughout the house.
Rachel Joseph pitched and subsequently directed “Fefu and Her Friends” for Trinity Theatre, which would give students experiences in working with interactive sets and with a script with a surreal story and dialogue.
Rachel Joseph, professor of theatre, has studied the work of María Irene Fornés for many years and she expressed her passion for this play and here she described her intentions for this production and how the production will stick with her.
“The goals for the production are not unlike our goals for any production — to give student actors, designers, stage managers and crew a chance to fully realize a production from start to finish, and to learn about a text by staging it,” Joseph said. “I am going to remember this production for the challenge of the immersive aspects of the play, the wonderful creativity that everyone has put into the production and the haunting accumulation of emotion that the play leaves me with after each time I see it.”
Aside from the director’s vision for the production, the student actors and crew had a lot of input. Students worked together to design the house set and incorporate props, which included ice cubes from a working fridge.
Genevieve Ellis, junior biology major, plays the character of Christina, a quiet, intelligent woman new to the friend group. She described the process of working with the interactive house set.
“We went through many different iterations of what the foods and the house were going to look like and where the different scenes would be taking place. So, the factors that sort of led to us getting to where it is now is we were having to consider accessibility, and also how people would be able to get to these rooms pretty fast to let things like transitions between scenes happen,” Ellis said. “But I really think it really gives the feeling that the audience is just walking through a day in the life of this house because they are seeing the one storyline and it’s truly like they’re getting to be a fly on the wall.”
