Anna Rinaggio, Campus Carrier asst. arts and living editor

Berry College Theater Company (BCTC) is preparing for their production of “The Illusion.” The play will be performed by a cast of eight Berry students at Sisters Theater. 

“The Illusion,” written by Tony Kushner, is a play based on “L’Illusion Comique,” a French work written by Pierre Corneille. The story follows a father who goes to a magician in search of information about his estranged son. The magician shows him three scenes, or rather illusions, from the son’s life. Each scene portrays the same five characters, but they each occur in a different location and the characters are referred to by different names.

Not wanting to give away any spoilers, Peter Friedrich, the director of Berry’s theater program, described the play in a few sentences. 

“A father and son have a huge fight, and the son runs away from home,” Friedrich said. “The father goes to the cave of a magician asking for help. That’s all I am going to say.” 

Junior Aury Dunlap said that part of the reason the company chose the play was because it did not require as many “needs” as ‘Bright Star,’ the musical BCTC put on in October. She said that its simplicity, however, would help the audience relate to the story. 

“We were doing a musical the first six weeks, which ‘Bright Star’ and musicals tend to come with a lot needs, like lights, sound, microphones, all this stuff,” Dunlap said. “This play doesn’t really call for a lot of that. We’re going to do some really cool special effects, which is going to be really fun, but it doesn’t call for a pit band on stage, and so the simplicity of it while also bringing true a story that can be close to people’s hearts was really important.” 

Several cast members mentioned that the play included eloquent, Shakespearian-like language, while still managing to be accessible to the audience so that they can understand it. 

“I don’t want to say [it is] Shakespeare for dummies, but it’s like you can imagine beautiful language, but it’s really understandable and it flows really nicely,” Senior Lauren Thompson, an actor in the show, said. “It feeds into the beautiful story and background as well.” 

Thompson said preparing for the show is a continuous process, and that the cast is always working on adding certain elements and refining them. 

“I’m reading the script every day, even though [I already have] lines of blocking memorized, refreshing those lines every day regardless,” Thompson said. “Also adding new elements, adding new choices every day, really building character. It’s never like ‘oh, we’re there, stop working,’ it’s always continue to build your character, continue to add, continue to explore.” 

The play will be done “in the round,” meaning that the stage is set up in the middle, with audience members seated on all four sides. Freshman Roger Thomas, who is also an actor, said that the audience is going to be split into four sections for the actors to interact with, making the audience a more vital part of the show. 

“The audience is split up into four sections: love, power, money, and magic,” Thomas said. “We’ll have someone in each section trying to get audiences to come to their specific section, and then as the play goes on, the certain sections are brought up in dialogue and actions, and so some of the sections are even directly interacted with.”

Actors will even break the fourth wall during the show, talking and interacting with certain sections of the audience. 

“[We] break the fourth wall,” Thompson said. “We talk to [the audience]. We make them interact [with us]. I cast spells, and I have the audience do it with me.  They are also waving their arms, they are helping the magic section. It’s helping me cast spells, so there’s a lot of interaction there. They can definitely participate and feel like they’re part of the show as well.” 

It takes more than just the actors to make a show like this go on, and Sophomore Paige Curtis said that while the cast may only consist of eight people, it takes 30 plus people to bring the play to life. 

“Even if we only have a cast of eight, behind that cast of eight is three stage managers, a director, the entire design team, the PR and marketing people, the producer, the president of the college, our understudies” Curtis said. “It truly takes a village to put up a show no matter how big or small the cast is.” 

Freshman Brian Thomas, who plays multiple characters, said what he loves most about the play is it uniqueness and how certain aspects reveal themselves to be connected throughout the show.  

“It’s definitely unique,” Thomas said. “There are a lot of elements to it that I think work really well, especially in the way that different aspects of the story connect to itself.” 

Thompson said that one of her favorite things was the small cast, which allowed more opportunities for everyone to get to know one another and bond. 

“I really like the small cast because it gives people who are in the cast more opportunities to bond with each other in a way that the large musical casts are often not able to,” said Thompson.

BCTC will be performing “The Illusion” November 16-19 at 7 p.m. and November 20 at 2 p.m. Tickets are available for purchase at berry.edu/onstage, and the show is a Cultural Event credit. The standby ticket policy used during ‘Bright Star,’ where students can come to the box office and hour before the show and get a free ticket if there are empty seats available, will be in effect again. Students are encouraged to buy tickets, however, as leftover seats are not guaranteed. 

The BCTC Instagram and TikTok can both be found @bctc_theater, where the company will continue to promote future theater events.