‘Misalliance’: An evening of arguments
“It’s about love and desire and family dynamics between parents and children. What it’s like when new energy gets brought into a home, what drives these people and the life force that keeps them going,” Mckenna Walwyn, lead in the play and a Utah State University student said.
Opening night of “Misalliance” took place on April 14 in the Morgan Theatre of the USU Fine Arts Center.
The play, written by George Bernard Shaw, takes place over the course of one afternoon and follows the Tarleton family as they welcome a new member into the family. Chaos ensues as they attempt to merge two families together. The play shifts when a plane crashes in the Tarleton’s backyard. Pilot Lina Szczepanowska and her copilot, Joseph Percival, come onto the scene.
Walwyn, who plays Lina Szczepanowska, said Shaw’s comedic style come through with quick wit and introspective dialogue.
“Shaw is all about argument,” Walwyn said. “And not argument in the aggressive sense but more about a presentation of ideas and a discourse back and forth about the ideas that Shaw had. I think he put his own experience of the world at this time into these characters. The thing that I love about this is that no one is really right and wrong. So coming into the audition process it was like, ‘Okay, how do I build my argument in the most effective way possible?”
Rehearsals began the week of March 13 and ran for four hours a day, six days a week, not including individual work of studying lines and personal research.
The first week consisted of table reads where the cast went through the script, before moving into off-book blocking. It was expected they come to rehearsal with memorized lines so more dramaturgical work could be done — understanding important concepts of Edwardian England in the 19th century, where the play takes place.
“Lina is such an incredibly strong woman and I think when I came into the process at the beginning, I was playing her a little too nice and a little too pleasant,” Walwyn said. “When in reality, she’s a female acrobat, she’s a pilot and every day she risks her life. And I think that takes a special kind of person, so being able to feel like I could inhabit that kind of woman was so empowering and made me feel not only like a capable artist but a capable woman. I think that’s something I carry with me through my career as an artist.”
Misalliance is directed by Leslie Brott. Brott holds many positions and responsibilities at USU. She is a professor in the department of theatre, interim associate dean for faculty development in the Caine College of the Arts and the head of acting in the department of theatre arts.
“We decided to do the play because it’s Shaw,” Brott said. “And Shaw is second to Shakespeare in the western literary canon of dead white guys. And it’s because of all the ideas he explores. And Shaw almost always explored every idea — philosophical, social, political — and did so by making us laugh instead of cry.”
In a virtual interview, Brott said the curricular and artistic opportunities for students were some of the motivating factors when it came to choosing this play. Faculty want students to leave as employable as possible, and Misalliance provided educational avenues for students working in stage management, design, costume, tailoring and many more.
Brott said in one way or another the entire department has been involved with putting on this production.
“It takes a village to make a world,” Walwyn said.
The actors require fight choreographers for physical moments such as roughhousing, a tantrum that is thrown and a slap on stage. Dialect and text coaches are also required for the Polish, Cockney and English accents of the characters.
“The sentences require great skill in speaking them, so that you as the audience don’t hear anything that’s a long sentence, you just hear a sparkling joke or witty and clever argument,” Brott said. “And that’s hard to do and make it seem like it’s your own thoughts and your own words coming out of your mouth, when really it’s Shaw’s thoughts and Shaw’s words coming out of your mouth. It’s a skill that’s required for anybody in acting.”
She also said the work put in by the actors is designed to make their production look effortless and natural.
“You’re not supposed to know we work that hard,” she said. “Everybody thinks that anybody could act, because good acting doesn’t look like it’s hard at all. But it is supposed to look that way. There is nothing actually akin to normal life in acting, except the fact that you’re talking and standing. Because you’re making a totally fake and artificial thing seem absolutely real. We don’t want you to question the experience while you’re participating in it. We want you to believe it and experience it with us.”
The complexity of the play is demonstrated through the many themes presented by the characters.
“It is about argument and it is about rhetoric, but it’s not about a conclusion,” Brott said. “It’s just about everybody putting forward their ideas all night long about women’s place in the world, what Edwardian courtship is like, why women should have rights, why marriage is either desirable or ridiculous, why people pursue occupations that they are passionate about or they are stuck in occupations where the work is drudgery. All these things are brought up in an amusing way and Shaw doesn’t prescribe how you should feel about them, but he makes you laugh while you think about them.”
Brott said this is a play she has always been quite fond of and has enjoyed watching her students make it come to life.
“To watch the students struggle with making all of those arguments come alive and then have a moment of success is joy-filled for me and is also really moving,” Brott said. “To know that I have contributed in some small way to help them reveal their artistry, to help validate themselves as craftspeople and to prepare them to enter the profession. It’s humbling and satisfying.”
For more information go to cca.usu.edu/theatre/productions/misalliance.