Arianna Wentworth of Jaffrey and the play she wrote, “One Little Room,” will be part of the European Young Theatre Festival later this month.
Five Hofstra drama alums, including Wentworth, are heading to Spoleto, Italy, to perform at the 10th edition of the European Young Theatre Festival – the only American college students to participate in this year’s international showcase.
Tori Bogacki, Kim Bramwell, Diante Ferguson, Jack Goodman and Wentworth, who graduated in May, will present “One Little Room,” written for drama and dance professor Cindy Rosenthal’s class, Modern and Contemporary Drama.
The European Young Theatre Festival, which runs from June 24 to 28, is part of the larger Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi, now in its 66th year, renowned for featuring artistry in the worlds of theater, music, opera and dance.
“This is a truly unique opportunity for our recent Hofstra Drama and Rabinowitz Honors College grads,” stated Rosenthal. “They will be showcasing their original work and talents in playwriting, directing, performance, music composition and design before an international audience of their peers and the esteemed artists, critics and academics who attend the Spoleto Festival.”
Students from schools in the Czech Republic, Italy, Germany, Lithuania, Romania and Scotland are also participating in the festival. The student teams will compete, with the winning performance taking home a prize of 1,200 euros, or about $1,000.
“Getting to not only continue doing the work that we love but being able to do it on an international stage right after graduating is a dream,” stated Goodman, who is composing an original score for the play. “I’m not sure if any of us have fully processed it yet.”
While Wentworth was working with her classmates to stage an excerpt of “One Little Room” in drama class, Rosenthal received information about the European Young Theatre Festival and encouraged her students to submit original works for consideration.
“The amazing Cindy Rosenthal introduced me to playwrights Brecht and Sarah Ruhl, who deeply influenced the play,” Wentworth stated. “I’m excited to dive into this piece with all the tools the drama department has given me, especially in terms of voice and movement techniques, costuming, directing, collaboration and communication.”
Wentworth’s play is about love and the roles partners assume in their relationships. Ferguson and Bramwell play James and Susannah, a devoted couple dealing with an unnamed, debilitating illness. As the play opens, James is comforting and caring for Susannah, who is too weak to leave their small living quarters. Over the course of the story, Susannah regains her strength while James’ health declines. By the end of the 30-minute play, Susannah has become the caregiver for James.
“I wanted to explore the idea of love and dismantle what we think of as a traditional relationship,” Wentworth stated. “This is a story which I think is closer to real life, where both partners take on responsibilities they didn’t expect. They do it because they truly love each other, not just because they have to. In the end, they are two people who share one soul.”
The idea for the play came to her as she was working through her own feelings about love and its power to hurt and heal.
“As a young adult in a very strange time, I’ve found that life’s lessons on love can be brutal, and I wanted to make a play that captured that idea in a gentler way,” she stated. “The play is absolutely inspired by some of the joys and hurts in my own life, but in a very abstracted way.”
Bogacki, co-director of “One Little Room,” can’t wait to share the play with an international audience.
“As we were working on it, I felt strongly that we should find a forum beyond campus to stage it,” she stated. “Then when Cindy shared the festival application I thought: ‘Here’s our chance.’”
Finding out they’d been accepted felt like “we won the lottery,” Bogacki stated. “The idea of creating art on an international scale with people who I not only love but respect and admire so deeply is a dream come true.”
Hofstra College and Liberal Arts & Sciences interim Dean Daniel Seabold and Rabinowitz Honors College Dean Warren Frisina are providing grants to cover the students’ travel expenses.
Rosenthal believes participating in the festival will be transformative for the students.
“I think the most exciting and potentially life-changing experience for them will be the daily interactions and conversations they’ll have with international cultural leaders,” she stated. “I know they’ll make Hofstra proud.”