Something on the Green’s student theatre company has been producing its short play festival, SPF30, for the past three years, where three 30-minute plays — written, directed and produced by students — are performed back to back. This year’s selection proved both devastating and hysterical, providing viewers with an emotional rollercoaster worth seeing twice.
The first play, “Porcelain Joan,” written by Evan Heath ’28, opened the night with a heavy, but beautiful portrait of grief. The plot follows Joan, played by Georgia Gray ’29, as she hides out in the bathroom at her father’s funeral. Heath’s lively script helped animate its somber subject, weaving witty dialogue with jarring glimpses of the underlying pain that pervades the play.
Characters spiral into arguments over ridiculous issues like handwashing, biphobia and bad grades that eventually reveal the true source of their distress: Joan’s father, a professor, has been murdered by an unknown shooter.
An especially powerful moment came when one of the professor’s students, Charlie, played by Gunner Peterson ’27, sobs as he frantically washes his face, which felt like an almost Shakespearean revelation of the deeply troubled state of his subconscious. But much of the play’s brilliance came from the comedic relief of Joan’s chaotic sister, Zooey, played by Grace Belgrader ’27, and Zooey’s boyfriend, played by Zane Elinson ’28.
As the pair flips between bickering and sincere attempts to comfort Joan through the walls of a bathroom stall, the chemistry between Belgrader and Gray shines through. The actresses touchingly portray the shared language of two sisters wrestling through a trauma they’d rather not acknowledge. The play ends with an explosive scene of Joan alone, shrieking and smashing a broken hand dryer — a painfully honest expression of how loss can manifest itself through visceral reactions and misplaced anger.
The second play of the evening, RISD junior Lane Bynum’s “Alien Baby,” brought a jolting change of tone as Dancing Queen blasted through the theatre and co-star Vanya Shah ’29, who plays Shay, roller-skated onto the stage. The play began with another bathroom-stall conversation — an apparent motif of the evening — as characters attempted to reach each other through thin emotional and physical walls.
From its outset, director Lulu Grieco’s ’28 staging was both inventive and striking. As viewers are introduced to protagonist Lucy, played by Herald Senior Staff Writer Rebecca Goodman ’27, they only have a view of her rollerskates and bloody underwear. Goodman delivered a touchingly faltering performance of nonchalance as she announced that she had just had a miscarriage while entering her mother’s roller-skating-themed 53rd birthday party.
As the two teenage friends scramble to devise some kind of plan, the play’s irreverent absurdity develops into a tender exploration of adolescence. Through bedroom conversations littered with pop-culture references and naivete, Bynum offers a touching ode to girlhood as Goodman and Shay grapple with how ‘adult’ they can act and how well Lucy can function independently of her mother, now that she could consider herself one, too.
The last show of the night sent instant bellows of laughter through the room as Mama, played by Kat Lopez ’27, stomped onto the stage with a manic look in her eye, proclaiming her mad excitement for camping. Written and directed by Harrison Douglas ’26, “As Above, So Below” sustained a hilarious rapport with the audience throughout its slightly longer run time. Entire lines were drowned out by the room’s hysterics. At one moment Kayla Lerner ’27, playing Frannie — a teacher’s pet type with a simmering existential rage — even struggled to suppress her own laughter on stage.
Nearly every line delivered by Eve Safer-Bakal ’28, who played a strange, half-Russian, ghostly character called Trinity, caused an uproar from the crowd. But beyond the plays’ slapstick comedy and exaggerated southern accents, the increasingly unhinged antics of Milford Baptist Church’s Youth Group’s visit to the wilderness and their frequent infighting over “who makes the rules” functioned as a sharp social commentary on the boundaries of religious authority.
The group’s spiritual training camp eventually descends into a mad cult ritual, with Mama scheming to sacrifice the group using her deathly shilajit concoction. By its conclusion, the play has successfully reckoned with the absurd powers of collective delusion and demonstrated how religious frustration can blur into madness.
Between the painful poignancy of “Porcelain Joan,” the bittersweet absurdity of “Alien Baby” and pure hilarity of “As Above, So Below,” the evening showcased an impressively wide range of comedy, tragedy and social commentary. Brought to life through collaboration and raw talent, the collection of three plays was a testament to the possibilities of student theatre.
Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled shilajit. The Herald regrets the error.
Rose Farman-Farma is a sophomore Comparative Literature concentrator from England who loves writing and music.
