SGS Student to Direct Drama at Liberty Lake Theater
SGS junior Hailey Poutiatine (front left in this cast photo) is producing and directing the U.S. premiere of The Cave, a play by fantasy author Mervyn Peake. The one-night show will be Tuesday, June 27 at 7:30pm at the Liberty Lake Community Theater (22910 E. Appleway). Admission is free, although the play deals with mature themes. See The Cave Flyer on the SGS website for details.
Hailey's interest in the play began with the author, a contemporary of both J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. "It's fantasy in the sense that it's like some strange, wonderful dream on the page, and the sheer level of detail with which he writes is intoxicating," says Hailey. "I was browsing the internet in November of 2016 and came across this play, The Cave. I was struck with a burst of inspiration that I have difficulty describing even now: I knew immediately that I was going to direct a production of it as my CAS project." In finding the rights to the play, she learned that it has only been discovered around 50 years after Peake's death among his estate in 2010. Having only been performed twice since, both times in England, means Hailey's production will be this show's U.S. premiere.
"I've also learned that things go much more smoothly if you have connections in the theater community," she says. "My mentor Christopher, a local actor and director (and the male lead in The Cave), has managed to find me a costume designer, a set designer, and four of our six cast members including himself, all of whom are working without pay... I suppose I've also learned that if you are passionate about a project, you can inspire others. That's what being a leader is really all about, I think, being able to inspire people with your own passion to act upon theirs."
"The play is a kind of allegory of dogma versus free thought," according to Hailey. "It takes place with the same characters over millennia. In the first act, the family of characters is a group of cave-dwellers cowering in fear of the moon as a kind of brutal goddess; a young woman enters the cave and challenges everything they think they know about the moon. The next act sees the woman as a fugitive accused witch and the divide she drives between the family members." The final act is set during the Cold War with the threat of nuclear war on the horizon.
Hailey is excited to present her CAS project to the community. "I want people to get lost in the story the way I was with Peake when I first discovered his work; I want them to get lost in this bizarre dream. Peake's work has a peculiar vastness all its own... I want that vastness inside a closed space to really come across."