Student theater troupe duels cancer in brainy ‘Wit’ this weekend

As the human body shuts down, the mind can race into strange territory. The battle between the intellectual and the physical, poetry and science in the last days of life is at the center of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Wit,” to be performed Saturday by the Maricopa High School Theatre Company.[quote_box_right]If You Go
What: “Wit”
When: April 1, 2 p.m. & 7 p.m.
Where: Black Box Theatre on west side to MHS Performing Arts Center, 45012 W. Honeycutt Ave.
Who: MHS Theatre Company
How much: Free (donations encouraged)[/quote_box_right]

“Wit” is the second student-directed production of the season, following the entertaining whodunit “And Then There Were None.”

Directed by senior Carlos Venegas, “Wit” has a cast of students and teachers. Performances are at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. in the Black Box Theatre at the Performing Arts Center.

“I’ve wanted to direct a show ever since my sophomore year, and this year it’s actually become a reality,” Venegas said.

He and “Wit” have something of a history.

“I’ve done projects on it since my sophomore year, and it kept coming up,” he said. “Finally, we were like, ‘Let’s just do it.’”

The partnered project two years ago included creating a technical design with which he was not satisfied. He tackled it again his junior year and was much happier with the results.

“That’s when I really grew attached to the show,” Venegas said.

First performed in 1995 and written by Margaret Edson, the play has appeared on and off-Broadway, winning Obie and Tony awards.

The central character, Vivian Bearing, is a professor of English literature in the final stages of terminal ovarian cancer. She is undergoing relentless tests and has become the subject of study by medical students in the hospital. And she is not exactly likeable.

“She is a very cold, uncompromising, very highly-motivated, driven professor,” said MHS drama instructor Cynthia Calhoun, who plays Vivian. “She comes across as actually incredibly mean. For her, knowledge is everything.”

The script is comprised of many monologues for Vivian as she tries to approach her fate cerebrally at first. Her specialty is the 17th century poetry of John Donne, whose metaphysical work plays a big part in her mental exercises as she deals with bad news after bad news.

A clinical fellow on the oncology team is one of her former students (played by Collin Martin), but it is soon clear he is not very different from Vivian – sentiment-free – and his interest in her is only as a scientific study rather than a dying human needing kindness.

Not just a keen portrait of the cancer experience, “Wit” is intellectual, stark, transforming and often bitingly funny.

“I majored in English when I first found this play when I was doing my master’s degree in English, and I wrote about it and loved it,” Calhoun said. “Something struck me about this character. She’s having to live with this illness, and it’s terminal, and she knows it’s going to kill her; she knows it’s going to affect her quality of life, and she knows they’re trying to do research. Me personally, I live with chronic illness, and there’s no cure, no treatment for it. I completely understand that feeling like a little piece of her body is giving up as she goes through this. Each new scene, it’s like another piece is done.”

Venegas said directing has been an education.

“I had no idea about a lot of the stuff that happens behind the scenes because I’ve always been on stage,” he said. He’s been helped out by assistant director Rachel Blakely, who also stepped in to play a role.

While Calhoun has enjoyed not having the burden of directing “And Then There Were None” and “Wit,” it has been a challenge keeping her fingers out of the decision-making process.

“I know all of the little pieces of things that need to happen for it all to come together, and the hard part for me is not jumping in and saying, ‘You need to do this and this and this,’” she said. “Carlos is perfectly capable of that, but there’s a point where he has to figure out how he’s going to get certain technical things done, how he’s going to make set changes happen.

“It’s been kind fun to watch.”

Students auditioned for most of the roles, but Venegas directly asked Calhoun and teacher Tyler Miller, who plays Dr. Kelekian. It is his stage debut.

Rounding out the cast are Kari Bejmowicz, Nikolas Mase, Ivie Keene, Chaienne Zoller, Aleyna Call and Mahkai Ball.

Admission is free, but donations are encouraged to help defray costs of sending state-qualifying student-actors to national competition this summer.

Still to come April 20-22 is the MHS Theatre Company’s big spring musical, “Beauty & the Beast.”