Theodore Day

= Division III =

''This article is part of a Climax Div III Issue. By Henry Parr, Managing Editor.''

Illustrating, among other things, the tense and painful relationship that artists have with their art, the art world, and themselves, Terrible Beauty from Mr. Plurality was an experiment in theatre that served as the centerpiece for Ted Day and Cameron Vokey’s respective Division IIIs. Matthew, the protagonist, is an unsuccessful artist who lives in the art gallery owned by his brother, Mark. Fed up with Matthew’s poor reception into the art world, Mark convinces Matthew to fake his own death. Matthew continues to produce art, including a number of videos that cue the audience into his artistic process and complicated relationship with Mark.

The play’s production was highly collaborative. While Day and Vokey wrote the script over the summer of 2008, they had the scene, set, costume, lighting, and sound designers contribute to the play’s production, from casting calls to direction. Day and Vokey had particularly good synergy by the end of the production. “After 6 months of working together [we] became like one voice, I could totally trust Ted in his decisions.” Cameron’s Div III, entitled Writing to Inform Design and Multimedia was “a focus on narrative and multimedia and how they can connect with one another.”

This was done his involvement in three projects, The Wilson and Alva Show, Terrible Beauty From Mr. Plurality, and Zack Shepard’s Division III. In each project Vokey has strived to “make multimedia an integral part of a narrative or story without seeming like it’s unconnected” making less of spectacle and more of an interactive give and take.

Looking for a connection between narrative theater and video art makes perfect sense for Vokey, who spent much of his Division I doing video, and all of his Division II doing playwriting and producing. “In my Div III I went back and tried to connect them together because I had done video work and had done theater, and I wanted to make them come together.” Day had a similar goal for his Div III entitled Collaborative Dramatic Writing and Multimedia Integration, which also was based around the production of Terrible Beauty from Mr. Plurality. Unlike Vokey, however, Day was more focused on playwriting. After writing Terrible Beauty from Mr. Plurality, Day looked to change the script so that it was an open-ended text, “an open piece of work that could constantly be added on to. The play, isolated, is a typical narrative but I was looking for a database structure…I wrote five plays that were there to inform people about the characters they’re basically just vignettes from the characters future or past.” These vignettes would make the literary experience more full, and help the production of the performance. Day went further with this idea when he wrote a script with the help of Vokey and used graphic novel illustrations. This sort of mixing media works well with Day’s academic progression that began with film and moved more towards acting and then writing.

Both Vokey and Day expect to continue their work playwriting, acting, and making video art, and plan on and starting their own collective arts group, based in New York City, with a few other Hampshire alums.