The Collegian

Issue date: 1/29/09 Section: Arts

Media Credit: Andrew Dodson

The darkened theater slowly fills with light one night when senior Natalie Scarlett slips in through the partially closed double doors and flips the switch. She moves into the space where light, sets, actors and of course drama will soon whirl about at her beck and call.

Scarlett will direct Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author," from April 16-19. She is the first Hillsdale College student to direct a play on the main stage in Markel Auditorium.

For now, the actors are still figments of her imagination (auditions won't begin until the Quilhot Black Box Theatre's "Screwtape Letters," based on the book by C.S. Lewis, wraps up Feb. 15). But she has been preparing for a year for the first rehearsal when six mysterious characters appear on the scene looking for a director to tell their story.

And she can't wait for rehearsals to begin so she can finally see the script she has read backwards and forwards come to life.

"I haven't figured a lot of this out," she says. "I'm really looking forward to seeing the insight of the actors. I will learn what the play means from the actors and their chemistry onstage."

Scarlett has acted since childhood, but she first realized her dream to direct in high school, when she directed a short work of Shakespeare. And while the opportunity to direct a main-stage show is an option for all theatre majors, Scarlett was the first student to know early enough in her college career she wanted to, and at the same time hit the rotating schedule of classes just right to make it a reality.

Over the past year, she has closely analyzed the script, corresponded frequently with Director and Professor of Theatre George Angell when she was away from school and met weekly with costume, set and lighting directors when she was here.

Now as casting approaches, she's considering how to keep an audience engaged during what she calls a challenging play, full of heavy dialogue and minimal action.

"I want the world of the directors and actors to be here and now at Hillsdale College. Since the audience is mostly Hillsdale students and they see the actors portrayed as Hillsdale students, then when they come in contact with the characters of the play who make the action, they'll be able to relate better to how the characters affect the actors," she says from the stage where she leans on a grand piano and gestures between the theater and the rows of empty red velvet seats.

"It will make the audience feel like they're a part of the play - that there's not so much difference between these actors and the lay people," she says. "I don't want to give them the answer. I want them to deduce it from the play themselves. I don't even know if there is an answer."

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