At the Von Meyer family’s annual Christmas gathering, chaos ensues when the death of matriarch Annabelle "Granny Annie" Smith-Von Meyer prompts a will-reading at the party. Who will inherit the Von Meyer fortune, and what scheming and backstabbing will it take to get there?
These questions were answered in "The Heirs," an entirely student produced work by University Theater (UT) that ran this February at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts’ Theater East. The play was written by third-year students Noah Klowden and Ronan O’Callaghan, directed by Klowden, and featured student stage managers, cast and crew.
UT is one of the many arts organizations on campus sponsored by the University of Chicago’s Committee on Theater and Performance Studies (TAPS), which provides a home for the collaborative efforts of students, staff, and faculty who are committed to theater and performance. Its mission is to offer students a wide range of artistic experiences in either professionally-led or student-initiated productions, like "The Heirs."
The University of Chicago’s University Theater (UT) has provided a multitude of opportunities for students to get involved with the arts and explore creative avenues outside of their studies since 1898. UT is committed to funding and supporting student work, producing over 35 shows each year in addition to other learning opportunities, like workshops, and a musical theater writing cohort. In addition to sponsoring their own productions through organizations such as Off-Off Campus, UT partners with other RSOs on campus, including Fire Escape Films.
“TAPS is designed to be a vibrant hub for student performance; the program developed out of the University’s rich tradition of student-run performing arts organizations, among which UT is most prominent,” said Ellen MacKay, chair of TAPS and an associate professor of English in the College. “We know that when students helm all of the creative and technical roles of a production, the opportunity for discovery is unparallelled. An ambitious production like "The Heirs" is a great way of emerging from the period of isolation we’ve all been through, and reconnecting with the vibrant expressive potential of live performance.”
"The Heirs" follows the Von Meyer family’s struggle as they speculate over who will inherit their grandmother’s fortune. The drama is intensified when estranged family members come back into the picture, presumably to claim their inheritance. Filled with heated plotting, gossiping, and shocking changes of heart, "The Heirs" ends with the dissolution of Granny Annie’s business and a new commitment to supporting family, rather than trying to tear it apart.
“The show embodies the feeling of being at a family party and not being able to relate to anyone there,” Klowden said. “These are people who are finally becoming adults who don’t know how to grapple with that. The realization is coupled with the pressure of what to do with a hefty inheritance.”
Working under COVID restrictions, considerable thought was put into how to accommodate masking with meaningful performance. Klowden says that there was an increased focus on making sure the top halves of actors’ faces were facing the audience as much as possible. It was also important to make sure the actors’ movements were very active and expressive, he said.
O’Callaghan and Klowden said that writing and producing the show entirely themselves was a triumphant learning experience. Neither had any prior formal directorial or playwriting experience, though both had participated in a Snell-Hitchcock House musical in the past. Inspired to create a small-cast show about a family Christmas party, with the mysterious and suspenseful themes of a Charles Dickens novel in mind, the two began collaborating on the play in November 2020. They wrote much of the play during Spring Break 2021, and said that remaining at home during the pandemic allowed them more time to work.
The first act of "The Heirs" was produced in a UT workshop during Autumn Quarter 2021. After many revisions and a proposal for a full-length production, the play was finally produced in its entirety as a mainstage production during the sixth week of the 2022 Winter Quarter.
Both O’Callaghan and Klowden emphasized the accessibility of getting involved with University Theater. Assistant director Sophia Ozaki Kottman also said she was amazed by how welcoming UT is, given that she did not have prior background in theater.
“I initially got involved with UT by asking to shadow a director, and instead they offered me the chance to direct a workshop myself,” she said. “I feel very lucky that so many opportunities are available.”
First-year student and first-time stage manager Eleni Lefakis echoed her, advising interested students to "just get your foot in the door, and once you're there, it's everything. One thing will flow from another.”
All involved with "The Heirs" spoke highly of the importance of student-written and student-produced work. As both a writer and a director for the show, Klowden described how working both positions was beneficial in creating a cohesive narrative through the set, staging and more.
“It’s a collaborative process with the actors and crew,” he said. “An actor might have an interpretation of a line that makes sense with their character that I had never thought of before.”
Lefakis cited the benefit of working in an environment of peers for developing artists. She also describes how the original nature of the play has opened the production process up to new challenges and opportunities. Having never produced a student-written work before, she describes a vastly different process of working out a production’s issues in older works that require different research.
“In a project like this, we get to find and work out the problems ourselves,” Lefakis said.
O’Callaghan said one of the most impactful parts of student-written theater is that it gives creative minds an outlet to workshop their ideas and put together works about which they can be proud.
"University Theater is helping nurture what will ultimately be the next generation of writers,” he said. “If you want to get a sneak peak of what the future of theater is going to look like, this is the place. It’s also a great means of building campus culture.”
If you missed UT’s production of "The Heirs," a recording is available here.