One Penny Down

Third Floor Studios

February 29 – March 3, 2024

When Summer is gifted a copy of Anna Karenina for her first Mother’s Day, the little details of her own life begin to add up in ways she hadn’t quite thought of before. Summer is particularly captivated by her husband’s mother, Edith. When the family makes a seemingly ordinary trip to their mall’s old-school department store, Summer’s world is changed forever. Rendered as an immersive experience, this is not your high school English’s version of Tolstoy’s classic novel.

One Penny Down is presented in a theatrical promenade style; leading the audience from room-to-room where they can ob- serve or participate in the theatrical performance. Audience members will be guided and instructed when to move to a new space by live actors, sound recordings, or lighting effects. This production aims to be inclusive of individual needs and acces- sibility. Front of house staff will be on hand to assist patrons as needed.

Written by Kirsten Greenidge
Directed by Gregg Wiggans and the OPD Collective
Associate Director: Ava Laroche
Production Manager: Youyou Huang
Stage Manager: Sara Gorelkin

Projection/Scenic Designer: Jacklyn Cinnamon
Props Coordinator: Ethan Vettese
Costume Designer: Joice Caldeira Simao
Scenic Charge: Anna Vidergar
Lighting Designer: Rachel Harned
Production Electrician: Ivy Comery
Sound Designer: Mackenzie Adamick
Technical Director: Reanna Valencia

Cast

Rowan Benz • Charlie Berger • Nicolas Bolton • Dylan Fineman • Kira Gandolfo • Olivia Kelly • Lola Kennedy • Chloe McFarlane • Mairéad O’Neill • Amanda Reynolds • Lana Sage • Maia Sanaa • Emma Weller

Reflections on working alongside faculty artists

by Lana Sage (CFA’24)

Throughout their years with the School of Theatre, students have fairly often heard of alumni working alongside professors in the industry, whether as actors, collaborators, or assisting their projects. It’s very special, these occasions of working alongside your mentors. SOT is very lucky to have a slate of projects with varying opportunities to work with their fellow students, guest artists, as well as their professors during their time at BU. One particular instance of this in the 2023/24 season was Associate Professor and future School of Theatre Director, Kirsten Greendige’s new play, One Penny Down.

On this project, students had a very specific task of being directed by working professional and grad student, Gregg Wiggans (CFA’25), as well as a room created by a mentor of theirs, Greendige. The undergraduate cast and creatives on the production included a large population of Theatre Arts Performance and Design Production and Management Majors. As part of the Theatre Arts major, students are required to take courses under Greenidge, called Theatre Ensemble. It’s there that they learn the value and skills of devising, playwriting, and how they bring themselves to their artistic rooms.

A lot of pressure can come in, when working with professors, especially in putting a play that a professor wrote on its feet for the first time. “There’s definitely a level of stress involved,” says Senior Theatre Arts Performance Major and actor in One Penny Down, Dylan Fineman. “A level of pressure, wanting to get it right for this person who is very prolific. Kirstens’ processes have never really been that way though. They’re very, ‘this is a learning process and if I wasn’t confident in your abilities I wouldn’t be letting you do it.”

Fineman has had the opportunity to act in Greenidge’s works twice during their time at BU, with One Penny Down as well as last year’s Fringe Festival production of Little Row Boat or, Conjecture. Fineman reflects on these processes and their time learning under Greenidge:

“Kirsten Greendidge is one of the best mentors and teachers I’ve ever had. I didn’t even do well in her classes and she just has like trusted me with her work and gone out of her way to compliment my work. It means a lot that she has trusted me and saw my work ethic and talent as something that was worthwhile enough to be in her shows. I really respect her as a playwright but also as a person. She’s unparalleled.” Dylan Fineman (CFA’24).

It was very similar for Senior Theatre Arts Design, Production, and Management Major, Anna Vidergar. As Paint Charge and Assistant Scenic Designer for One Penny Down, being a collaborator with her professor was very full circle. Vidergar especially enjoyed being able to discuss the script with Greenidge, asking her questions that Greenidge had once asked her in class. Not only that, but, “If you work with someone you know and someone who’s been teaching you, you get to see how the techniques you’ve been learning from them are employed and that informs your own work going forward.”

For Vidergar, this process truly displayed the importance of having a relationship with your playwright as a designer, even if your playwright is dead, as most are. “Working with Kirsten makes the work a living thing,” says Vidergar. “New work designing and collaborating allows for a lot more mutability in a process. You come in with your creative ideas and questions and thoughts and that can inform the playwright. Knowing the playwright also informs you.”

When working with mentors and professors, there can be a sense of pressure to ‘do them right.’ With her plays at SOT, Greenidge continually offers students the ability to take her new works into their own hands, letting her words fuel their work and letting their work fuel her words. The rapport she’s built with them alleviates any stress they might feel, because she’s already made it known that she’s proud of her students. This then allows the work to live fully on its own as a collaboration fueled by mutual artistic respect and knowledge from both the professor and her students.