Theatre-Intime opens the spring semester with its production of ‘Six Degrees of Separation.’
By: Matt Smith
It’s just after 7 p.m. on a Tuesday night, and the cast and crew of Theatre-Intime’s production of Six Degrees of Separation are hard at work. Two dozen Princeton undergraduates move about the Hamilton-Murray Theater in fits of excitement, barely 48 hours away from the opening curtain on the first show of the spring semester.
Junior Noah Burger, who’s making his directorial debut with the student-run theater troupe, pops into the "cherry room" off the lobby to catch his breath. The rail-thin Mr. Burger has a few free moments to chat while his actors and actresses are getting publicity pictures taken across the hall.
"It’s kind of a crazy time," he says, "but I got lucky. I have a lot of cast members who are very dedicated to the show, the whole crew everyone is putting in a lot of time and energy into making it good.
"It’s completely extracurricular," Mr. Burger adds. "Nobody gets paid, nobody gets credit. You’re not really here unless you want to be."
Auditions took place in October and rehearsals began in mid-November, but Mr. Burger has been working toward this moment since spring of last year, when he submitted a proposal to direct John Guare’s Obie- and Tony-award winner. The civil and environmental engineering major has also been attending to those intrusive Ivy League courses.
"It hasn’t conflicted with any of my classes, so I haven’t had to tell anybody," he says, "but it’s all I’ve been thinking about for the past two months. Fortunately, my advisor knows what I’m doing, and there are a couple of professors I talk to about it."
Mr. Burger hops up and disappears back into the theater, and in come the leads Bibiane Choi, Ted Hall and Khalil Sullivan. Ms. Choi and Mr. Hall play Ouisa and Flan Kittredge, a wealthy New York City couple. Mr. Sullivan plays Paul, the blank-slated young man who charms his way into their lives under false pretenses. All three actors seem in good spirits, but agree that preparations have been challenging because of the shadings of their respective characters in this comedic drama.
"People ask about character development and I think the key to Flan is that he doesn’t want to develop," says Mr. Hall, a sophomore who previously appeared with Intime in Edward Albee’s The American Dream. "Additionally, he’s a very recognizable type in this area an upper-middle-class, New York-y, cultured-but-showing-it kind of guy. That’s what makes it hard to do him right, because he could be your neighbor."
Ms. Choi’s character, Ouisa, is equally difficult because of her complexity. Unlike her husband, she’s intrigued by the changes she feels as Paul insinuates himself into her life and subconscious. She’s also quite funny.
"She’s the most cerebral character in a funny way," says Ms. Choi, a senior who has also acted in Medea and Macbeth. "She has all these glib lines, and a lot of dialogue reminds me of the old movies from the ’40s and ’50s, where you have the fast-talking dame. A lot of it is sort of silly comedy, but at the same time you see she is educated and obviously an intelligent woman."
What’s expected of Ouisa and what’s actually going through her head are entirely different things, Ms. Choi contends.
"I guess the challenge there is finding some way to make that congruous," she says, "to have it make sense and be believable without being choppy. You can do the caricature of a socialite and then you can have the intense, intellectual, internal-monologue thing. Bridging the gap between the two has been interesting."
Khalil Sullivan is an accomplished junior who has written four plays, composed a short operetta and acted extensively, but he says Paul has been a tricky character for him to get.
"I have no clue who my character is," Mr. Sullivan says. "No one even knows his real name in the play. His problem is he doesn’t know what to do in that world, or the world in general. He’s always playing someone different for different people, and trying to make himself over.
"He has this image of what he should be, and you see reflections of that image in other characters, because everyone has an identity crisis. That makes my character very hard to play. I’m not sure who I’m supposed to be."
What makes Paul such a memorable character, adds Ms. Choi, is that for the first half of the play, he charms everyone audience included. When you see what’s really going on, everyone feels like they’ve been misled.
"It’s pathetic, and scary," she says. "You do know absolutely nothing about him. It becomes very real in the end, when they’re trying to find him and they don’t actually know his real name. They have no way to get in touch with him, to get into his head and know the real thing. It’s frightening how people relate to each other, which parts of social relations ring true."
Theatre-Intime’s production of Six Degrees of Separation continues at the Hamilton-Murray Theater, Murray-Dodge Hall, Princeton University, Feb. 14, 8 p.m., Feb. 15, 2, 8 p.m. Tickets cost $12, $10 seniors/staff, $6 students. The 2002-2003 season continues with The Water Engine, Feb. 27-March 8; Bums and Monkeys, March 27-April 5; The Fix, April 17-26; Student Playwrights Festival, May 15-17. For information, call (609) 258-1742. On the Web: www.theatreintime.org

