Student Blog: Presenting New Works: MARY SHELLEY

During the two weeks between Thanksgiving and winter break I was part of a staged reading of a student written musical, Mary Shelley, through the Sandbox Student Series at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Mary Shelley is a new musical written by University of Colorado Boulder student Jenna Christine which follows the life of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley. Before beginning to work on this show most of the cast only knew Mary Shelley as the woman who wrote Frankenstein, but throughout the rehearsal process we learned a lot more about her wildly interesting life from the script and the playwright herself.

Claudia Ellis, a senior at the University of Colorado Boulder, was the director of this piece. One of the things that Claudia has focused her studies on at CU is absurdism within the boundaries of realism and she said, "this story ended up giving me the perfect opportunity to explore that, especially with the blocking of the show." There were lots of fun elements that Claudia incorporated into our blocking such as two people becoming the costume for my character, Claire, forming my dress and headpiece, a clown duo portraying the character of Dr. Polidori, and many cast members portraying animals.

I was super excited to be a part of this cast because it was going to be my first opportunity to act this semester. I was also super excited to sing! We had a lot of fun during rehearsals messing around and discovering new things about our characters and the show. There were a lot of interesting tonal shifts that we got to explore ranging from mourning death to anger about cheating to happily getting drunk at a party. It was challenging but a lot of fun to be able to portray all of these vastly different emotions all within a 45 minute long performance.

We only had two weeks to rehearse and put on this staged reading so we learned all of the material super quickly and I am really proud of the show that we were able to put on. I had a great time working with this cast and production team and can't wait to be part of more Sandbox productions in the future.

Check out the recording of this first reading of Mary Shelley here!