Basement Arts kicks off fall season with "Wallace and Women"

By Robyn Melamed

Daily Fine/Performing Arts Editor

Without missing a beat, the Basement Arts season is opening this weekend with the play "Women and Wallace," written by Jonathan Marc Sherman. For those unfamiliar with Basement Arts, it is a theater group open to students of all majors and backgrounds. This group has a very low budget, so it is necessary for them to use creativity in staging, acting and directing to make the plays exciting. These productions take place in the basement of the Frieze building, and are free of charge. This year, Basement Arts will be performing more frequently than in past years cranking out one show per week.

"Women and Wallace" begins as Wallace, at age 18, flings a tomato at a young woman dressed in all white, shouting "I love you." The play then goes back in time showing Wallace, at age 6, comeing home from school to find his mother dead in the kitchen.

From this moment on, he "alters his perception of what love is, what women want, and what he wants from them," said senior theater major and director Marc Kamler. Junior theater major Steve Best who plays the character of Wallace, added, "He uses his mother's death as a scapegoat whenever something goes wrong."

The rest of the play is comprised of short scenes involving Wallace and the women that come into his life during his younger years and adolescence.

These include his ornery grandmother, a girl who suckers him into his first kiss, a psychiatrist that tries to help him deal with the loss of his mother, and the senior whom he first has sex with when he is a college freshman.

"Throughout the play, Wallace has a double character," Best said. "He's constantly putting on facades to get the girl." Kamler said these scenes "present Wallace's views of women and his fears of intimacy."

Kamler chose "Women and Wallace" because he has no understanding himself of what women want, and said, "it's fun to explore and play with these ideas." He added, "I've always loved everything about this play. Now I've gotten the chance to come up with a vision that can be followed through on the stage."

Kamler chose to direct this play with a black and white color concept. All of the sets and costumes will be black and white aside from a few exceptions cast in red. "This adds a special dimension of happening in the past," Kamler said.

Best thinks this color "makes it a little more artistic. It adds another layer to the play's realism." Overall, Best thinks the realism will hit home with the male audience. "From a guy's perspective, they'll see things and be like 'yeah! That happened to me!'"

Joining Best in the cast are Milena Grubor, Julia Merchant, Taryn Fixel, Johanna Schuster-Craig, Dayna Santoro, Jessie Cantrell, Danielle Streisand and Erin Bahl. "The cast is great. I mean, hey, I'm with eight girls!" Best said.

Kamler agreed, saying, "We've only had 12 days of rehearsal. It's been hectic and crazy, and they're willing to work long hours and play hard."

Courtesy of Marc Kamler

Basement Arts opens its season with the production "Wallace and Women."