By Gerrit Goodwin/campus news editor
South Campus is satirizing stigmas against the better sex and bringing attention to gender disparity with its production of Madame President?
Theater director Melinda Benton said the play is a docudrama written and put together by drama students using research, poems, literature and improvisation.
South student Naomi Roundtree said her contribution to the play is a monologue and poem she had written and is excited to see it come together on stage.
“I was really thinking about myself and my interactions with other people in the past,” she said. “My parents used to call me over-emotional, but I found a place to pour that into with my poem and monologue.”
Photos by Bogdan Sierra Miranda/The Collegian
All of the characters in the play are based on actors’ actual personalities, South student Victoria Nearn said.
“I’m used to being given a script and being told what to say,” she said. “This time, we were given the opportunity to be ourselves, and we took it and ran with it.”
Student Shyane Hammel said she is very blunt and open when it comes to speaking her mind, and that’s exactly how she based her character.
“A lot of the collaborating was just us being girls and talking about issues we wouldn’t normally get together and talk about,” she said.
Student Bryan Angton, one of the few males in the production, said his role is adversarial to the women of the play.
“The play is about how women can step out and do a man’s role and about showing that women can do anything that men can do,” he said. “But it’s also about how men react and push against that change.”
Student Jazz Ingram stressed that the play isn’t made to preach or press issues of feminism, and while it does hope to raise questions, the play is also meant to entertain.
“We wanted people to enjoy what they are watching and not feel like they are sitting through a documentary, a lecture or something academic,” she said.
Nearn said the show speaks to her because it’s not about gender or color.
“It’s about people being people and just doing the human things they have to do,” she said.
Performances are free to all TCC students, faculty and staff, $3 for non-TCC students and $6 for the general public. Showtimes are 7:30-9:30 p.m. Feb. 18-20 in the Joe B. Rushing Center for the Performing Arts (SPAC 1203). Tickets are available 30 minutes prior to the performance. There is no late seating.
