With a bell, a made-up language and the metaphysical world, the South theater program brings the absurd comedy of David Ives to life.
“The World According to Ives 2025” comprises four one-act plays by American playwright David Ives: “Mere Mortals,” “The Universal Language,” “The Philadelphia” and “Sure Thing.” Drama instructor Lindy Benton-Muller said Ives has been called the master of the short form.
“He’s witty and clever,” she said. “I don’t tend to put anything on stage that I don’t want to spend a lot of time with that would make my job hard. So I choose things that I think my audience will enjoy, but mostly that my actors will enjoy working on because it’s a lot of hard work.”
“Mere Mortals” follows three workers sitting on a girder 50 stories up on their lunch break. The audience listens to their conversation as the men banter about the contents of their lunchbox and how their wives are doing while also sharing their own secrets.
South student Julie Pruett, who plays one of the workers, has been doing theater for as long as she can remember.
“My first real show was ‘Beauty and the Beast,’” she said. “I did that my senior year at my high school. I played the Beast, and it was the best experience that I had there at that school. And I was like, ‘You know what? I want to do more of this.’”
Benton-Muller decided to set all the plays in the near past. She said that even though the original material didn’t specify a time, the technology references gave her an idea of when the story should take place.
“That’s been interesting, working with the students and explaining some of the references to them,” she said. “I asked them to go look for thermoses, and then I found out later, they didn’t know what thermoses were. OK, because that’s a word I use. It’s a thing that’s in the lunch box. They didn’t know. So now they do, because they work with thermoses and their lunches.”
“The Universal Language” is about a woman named Dawn who stumbles upon a man who speaks a made-up language, Unamunda, and he offers to teach her for $500. “Sure Thing” is about the first meeting between a man and a woman that keeps going wrong. Bill keeps messing up the interaction with Betty, and when things go wrong, a bell rings and time rewinds back to give them another chance.
South student Haley Sutter, who plays Dawn and Betty, said she found playing the more timid Dawn to be harder.
“I have to be very shy and reserved for the first good portion of [‘The Universal Language,’] and as a theater kid, it’s a little different for me, because I’m not very shy or reserved,” she said. “So it was a learning curve to act as though I was.”
Benton-Muller said Ives is good at writing plays that students enjoy performing.
“The students are really enjoying his work because he’s pretty funny,” she said. “We do have a disclaimer on it, though, for adult themes and language.”
“The Philadelphia” is about two friends in a restaurant who discuss the metaphysical explanation for one of them having the worst day ever. Pruett, who plays the character having the bad day, said she wasn’t familiar with Ives before she started working on the play but found his work funny.
“It’s just kind of absurd,” she said. “But it’s a real level of absurd that you can kind of relate to. And you’re like, ‘Oh, I’ve been there.’”
Sutter said the cast has been putting the show together well.
“It’s interesting because there’s not a whole lot of us, so we work with what we have,” she said. “We’ve got multiple people in multiple shows, but everyone’s very, very good at what they do. And of course, Lindy’s really, really good at what she does, and she’s good at working with the cast that she has.”
The play will run from Nov. 6-8 at the Carillon Theatre with free admission.
“Most of my students have just been really looking forward to coming and seeing their peers on stage doing this hilarious material,” Benton-Muller said. “Don’t miss it. It’s really good. I think you’ll like it.”
