An old, grungy cinema. Three young, dead-beat employees. Conversations that stir the soul.
Boston University is introducing “The Flick” to campus, which is a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, directed and performed by BU’s Stage Troupe. The show is set in a run-down movie theater located in central Massachusetts, and the plot revolves around its three, also run-down, employees: Sam, Avery and Rose.
As the show progresses, the audience learns more about their individual lives through their conversations with one another, discussing their dreams, pitfalls and overall wonderings as they tidy up the fallen-from-grace cinema.
According to members of the cast and crew, there are two things about the show that give it a unique character: it’s highly intimate — with a cast of only four actors — and the dialogue is sentimentally realistic, echoing words familiar to us all.
Abby Kass, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences and stage manager for the show, said that working with a small cast was one of the highlights of the experience.
“In a small show, you get to know each other all really well, and it’s really nice to become a family,” she said.
Esiri Madagwa Jr., a junior in the College of Engineering, who plays the part of Avery, also found the “intimate setting” of the play to be highly rewarding, as well as pose an unusual challenge.
“This is the first time I’ve been in a smaller cast,” Madagwa said. “I’ve really had to dive into the character.”
The small cast puts more pressure on the individual actors: more lines to remember and a greater urgency for full-fledged character development.
With only three protagonists for the audience to focus on, each actor has a bigger slice of the spotlight to themselves. To be convincing, they’ve really had to zone in on their own part, resulting in intimate, striking portrayals of their characters.
“There’s been some little flubs, but I’ve really surprised myself with how much I’ve come to know, over the past two months,” Madagwa said about his personal experience in learning his lines for the show.
Both Madagwa and the show’s director, Lucy Gamades, a senior in COM, stressed the importance of how realistic the entire production is in every aspect, describing it as “naturalistic.”
The play is set in the 21st century, and in Stage Troupe’s rendition, all the characters are “college-aged,” Gamades said.
“The dialogue is super modern,” she said. “There are ‘likes’ and ‘so’s’ and ‘ums’ written into the show,” bringing the characters closer to their audience.
As the story progresses, the characters appear less and less like caricatures, and more like real people, with real stories.
“Just looking at the script, it’s so real,” Madagwa said. “All the characters are so genuine, and you can relate to each one, and see exactly why they’re doing the things they’re doing.”
To bring the play even closer to home, it was written by Annie Baker, who, at 36, is just young enough to be considered part of the millennial generation.
According to The New Yorker, she is a “funny, empathetic genius who re-creates human speech with such amusement and care, that her characters feel startlingly familiar” — and “The Flick” demonstrates that skill.
Gamades said that one of the biggest challenges of putting together the play was finding the perfect props — namely, the crucial theater seats to go on stage.
According to Gamades, Stage Troupe ultimately got a few from two local, independent cinemas: Coolidge Corner Theatre and West Newton Cinema. Both sport old-school vibes complete with intimate grungy atmospheres, and both are geared toward showing independent films that may not be found in mainstream theatres, she said.
The show premieres on Thursday and runs through Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Student Theatre at Agganis Arena.
