The Shafer Alliance Laboratory Theatre is set to kick off its 14-show season this weekend. This season seeks to be as “diverse as VCU’s student body,” according to SALT board member and theater graduate student Joseph Carlson.
“The SALT board is a group of students who facilitate and champion the cause of student theater,” Carlson said.
In order to provide the student body with as entertaining of a season as possible, collaboration and input are required of all the theater department’s students. SALT consists of Theatre VCU students who want to keep the massive season as colorful as possible. All performances are free to the public are original plays premiere every weekend of the semester.
“When we look at diversity, we look at it in terms of form and content,” Carlson said. “Our first show is ‘The Gingham Dog,’ which deals with a multiracial couple. It’s very realist and deals with a lot of props.
“Another project is called ‘Ant Farm,’ which is an adaptation of a novel. It’s going to be a multimedia performance-projection screens and such. We also have a musical coming up later in the season.”
The doors are not open exclusively to students. The department’s professors also use the Shafer Street Playhouse’s stage as a forum to express themselves through works that might not make it to the Hodges Theatre at the W.E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts.
“It’s not only a great place for students to direct but also for our faculty to tackle subjects that may be a bit too taboo for the more main stream audience,” Carlson said.
Back by popular demand, beginning Sept. 5, every other Friday will feature a reprisal of “The No-Shame Variety Show,” an open improvisation for anyone – not just Theatre VCU students – to sign up and to perform in any way they deem fit or zany.
“Space is limited, and we had tremendous success with ‘No-Shame’ last year, so we’re doing it all over again. There were nights where we were filled to capacity and had to keep people standing in the aisles,” Carlson said.
Because of Carlson’s and others’ initiative, student theater has grown in popularity in recent years, as the low-budget, yet soulful, work taking place at the playhouse’s Newdick Theatre has been receiving more attention from theatergoers.
“We want the students to empower themselves-for them to take their education into their own hands and find practical ways to apply what they’re learning in the classroom to working on a project and not waiting for someone to hand you a script and say, ‘I want you to be in this,’ ” Carlson said.
“If you have a desire to see something put up, get together and make it happen,” he said.