THEATER COMPANY OF BRYN MAWR STUDENTS PERFORMS AT FRINGE

Uncut Pages Cast Members

Of the nine Bryn Mawr students who joined to form a campus theater company called Uncut Pages last semester, only one has graduated. But the company itself has moved on to the wider world. Production Values, a play conceived, written, produced and performed by members of the company, is one of the offerings at this year's Philadelphia Fringe Festival. What's more, City Paper has selected it from more than 150 shows as one of its "25 picks for a successful Live Arts-Fringe experience."

In Production Values, two rival Shakespeare companies — one ultratraditionalist, one revisionist — vie for control of the stage and the audience. The show opens with a scene from a production of Twelfth Night mounted by the traditionalists, with actors in full Elizabethan costume. The scene is interrupted by Henry the Fifth rallying his troops in a production that features cross-gender casting, nontraditional costumes and kitchen utensils representing weapons as props. The actors do their best to persevere in their separate productions, and the clash of artistic visions heats up as directors and costume designers join the battle.

Production Values was conceived by the members of Uncut Pages and written by Charlotte Rahn-Lee '05, a double major in biology and French who won the 2002 Young Playwrights Inc. National Playwriting contest and is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. Rahn-Lee, who had appeared in the Bryn Mawr-Haverford Theater Company's award-winning 2001 production The Play of Embraces, asked Theater Director Mark Lord, a Fringe veteran, for advice about getting into the Fringe Festival.

"It's a complicated process," Rahn-Lee said. "You have to find the venue and rent the venue." The project also required funding. Rahn-Lee and the rest of the members of Uncut Pages went to work researching funding sources and creating publicity and promotional materials to help solicit donations. Rahn-Lee had been awarded a Bryn Mawr Alumnae Regional Scholarship and planned to use it to do biology research during the summer. When she won a separate fellowship that paid for a research internship on campus, she got permission to apply the funds to the dramatic project instead. The group also raised money through The Orphanage, a nonprofit artists' collective that acts as a fiscal sponsor to smaller groups so that they can collect tax-free donations using The Orphanage's status as a registered nonprofit.

Becky Fullan '04, Katie Rutledge '05 and Chelsea Phillips '05 contributed a lot of writing and assembling of promotional materials, much of it using graphic design work done by Julia Niedzwiecki '06. Lilah Rahn-Lee '05, Charlotte's twin sister, created a Web site for the group. Other members of the cast are Crista Fuentes '07 and Amy Sullivan '05; Uncut Pages members Elizabeth Hanson '06 and Madelynn Watkinson von Baeyer '06 are studying abroad and do not appear in the production.

Production Values is playing at the Philadelphia Ethical Society Building at 1906 S. Rittenhouse Square. Remaining performances are Thursday, Sept. 9, at 8 p.m.; Friday, Sept. 10, at 9 p.m.; Saturday, Sept. 11, at 4 and 7 p.m.; Sunday, Sept. 12, at 2:30 p.m.; Thursday, Sept. 16, at 9 p.m.; and Friday, Sept. 17, at 9 p.m. Tickets are $5 and can be purchased at the door (from 30 minutes before curtain time) or through the Live Arts-Fringe actual or virtual box office (for more information, call 215-413-1318 or visit the Live Arts-Fringe Festival Web site.

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