Walking into Tarbutton Theater at Oxford College, I was immediately pulled into the world of theater by one scene: mysterious music played on bar chimes, the realistic stage setting of a theater practice room and the actors lying flat on the ground. Gripped by a thrilling tension, I wondered what was going to happen next in the cramped theater practice room. Why were the actors lying flat, motionless, expressionless? This opening seemed unlike most theatrical performances.
With a crisp drum sound effect, the play started. The stage production “Circle Mirror Transformation” was written by Annie Baker and premiered on Broadway in 2009. Set in Vermont, the play looks at four theater students and a theater teacher, each at different stages in their lives. Throughout their journey in theater class, the students and teacher make incredible connections with one another that mold their lives in different ways, changing their perspectives and life pursuits.
One aspect of the play that amazed me was its representation of human interactions. The character development and narrative progress are presented through various theater practices that do not solely rely on everyday conversation. Through symbolic actions and non-verbal communication, human interactions are portrayed as more intricate and instinctive.
The audience was introduced to the characters’ names during the class’ first theater practice, where they walked around the classroom and introduced themselves to one another. From the characters’ postures to the tone they used to introduce themselves, it was clear that they had unique personalities: Lauren, played by Dylan Jagla (24Ox), only walked along the wall, reflective of her introversion; Schultz, played by Noah Lian (23Ox), became awkward when he bumped into others; Theresa, played by Elizabeth Peters (23Ox) was excited, energetic and somewhat disorganized; James, played by Chris Pocharski (24Ox), walked and greeted everyone in a formal manner; and Marty the theater teacher, played by Makalee Cooper (23Ox), smilingly observed everyone.
Additional theater practice scenes further allowed the audience to become familiar with the characters. In one exercise, the classmates exchanged names and attempted to act out another person’s story. In a different exercise, each character shared a word, prompting other characters to make up unexpected stories based on that word out of tacitness. By acting out an event important to one character, the entire crew could engage in a precious moment in that character’s life. By infusing different emotional energy into repetitive lines, the actors were able to construct a narrative story, although the lines did not make sense at all. In one round, Teresa was shouting “Goulash” to James, and James replied with “Ak mak.” Even though the lines did not have literal meanings, the characters’ anxiety, tenderness and explosive emotions convinced everyone that they were in love. Through these practices, the classmates and teacher deeply engaged in the lives of one another and created stories together — not through repetitive icebreakers or cliche self-introductions, but through the magical connections that theater practice facilitates.
Among all the theater practices depicted in the play, one stood out as a significant motif that connected the play’s six acts — the game of counting off. This warm-up began with five actors lying flat on the ground. They then had to collectively count from one to 10 without two people shouting the same number at the same time. The game sounds easy, but its execution was difficult. At first, the group found novelty in the game, but despite their focus, the group could never successfully count to 10. The game later gained more meaning as it started to signify the characters' personal struggles. For instance, Schultz rushedly entered a relationship with Theresa, but found out that she did not like him as much as he liked her. Schultz subsequently sighed, becoming absent-minded during the count-off and failing to follow others. Additionally, halfway through the semester, Lauren burst out during the count-off, asking, “Are we going to do real acting?” What’s the point of counting to ten? I want to learn how to become a real actress.”
As a former actress at Oxford Theater, I had the same question as Lauren did when we spent half an hour doing warm-up exercises at every practice. However, when an actor looked into my eyes and threw me a “zip” that I had to deliver to another actor with “zap,” according to the exercise rule, I felt the new energy they infused into me. I felt the responsibility of spreading the energy to others, using it to build an intimate community with both the cast and the audience. Receiving and giving is the essence of human communication.
The play breaks down the conventions of human conversation and reconstructs our perception of good communication. To become a good actor is to possess good skills of communication, which is why actors must engage in these seemingly meaningless theater games. Communication is not solely about language and rhetoric — it is more about the natural and active feeling, receiving and delivering of energy.
The Oxford production of “Circle Mirror Transformation” not only led the cast to reconstruct ways of human communication through theatrical practices, but also enabled more students not necessarily interested in acting to feel the magic of theater. Student workers in the Tarbutton stagecraft crew and students from Oxford’s “Stagecraft” class (THEA_OX 130E) have been constructing the stage since late January, from building a model of the theater classroom to constructing a realistic new room in Tarbutton with their own hands. The staged theater classroom resembled a real practice room, containing a mirror, closet, lockers and even exit signs. The lighting was warm, giving off a cozy and realistic feeling. Yet, the small and slightly imbalanced stage also reminded the audience that intricacies in emotions and communications that we usually ignore in daily life might take place on the stage.
“The goal is to make the set hyper realistic but also a little theatrical, so we built a platform with an asymmetric floor that makes the audience feel like they are peeking into a classroom in an old community center,” Catherine Hu (24Ox), who is a member of the Tarbutton stage crew, said.
Through constructing the theater set, the stagecraft crew were also deconstructing common perceptions of what a play should look like. The crew offered the audience a new perception of how common scenes that have been taken for granted can transform. The audience were asked to view the commonly seen classroom from a different perspective, observing human communication at a distance, having a chance to reflect on conventional communications.
“Circle Mirror Transformation” made me reconsider the ways that humans connect and the power that theater holds. Theater is not just an illusion completely afloat in imagination; it is a rethinking of the presumed ways of communication.
