MOUNT VERNON — Maria Brescia-Weiler stood at the back of the room, rows of chairs filled with audience members in front of her.
“I’m kind of nervous,” Brescia-Weiler admitted.
She fiddled with her opening notes, reviewing them in the last minutes before she took the stage in front of those same audience members from who she was trying to hide her nerves. When the clock ticked over to 7:30 p.m., Brescia-Weiler made her way through the crowd onto the newly-designed stage.
“This project has been a year in the making and it’s really kind of surreal to me that people are finally getting to see it,” Brescia-Weiler, a junior at Kenyon College, said to the audience gathered for a private showing.
She was talking about “Rooted: Stories of Knox County,” a play that started out as an oral history project last spring. Brescia-Weiler and three of her Kenyon classmates – Sarah Aguilar, Mary Grace Detmer, and Gabe Jimenez-Ekman – interviewed 15 Knox County residents about their lives here and how they envision the county’s future.
The class may be long over, but Brescia-Weiler scripted the interviews into a play with a town hall-like atmosphere. Actors portrayed those individuals interviewed for the class, bringing to life Knox County residents’ stories. The characters talked about their family histories, how they came to Knox County or why they chose to return to their roots, start families, dealt with race, built businesses, and ran a farm.
A sense of a community forum began to form as Brescia-Weiler’s vision came to life. Though the interviews were done at different times by different students, Brescia-Weiler crafted the play to make it seem as if the characters on stage were simply sitting down for a discussion on raising children or running a family business.
“I didn’t actually write any of the words. All of them came from the interviews that we conducted last semester,” Brescia-Weiler said. “All I really had to do was listen to them and look for the themes to emerge.”
Brescia-Weiler was humbled by the number of people who donated their time to help bring the play to fruition.
“It’s really incredible to have so many people get to see it because it’s been something I’ve been thinking about so much for a year,” said Brescia-Weiler. “This is always what I hoped it would end up as.”
The play was held in the Blackbox Theater on a newly created stage. Brescia-Weiler collaborated with MVTarts to bring the play to life.
“It’s just one of those things where you’re not quite sure where to go with it because these are real citizens’ words,” said Bruce Jacklin, director of the show. “You don’t want to discredit them and you want to tell what they said. So you have to set it in that format. It’s more like a town meeting.”
Despite the unusual format in the beginning, Jacklin thrived on the ability to collaborate and problem solve.
“That’s where you get creative,” Jacklin said.
“Rooted: Stories of Knox County” will be presented to the public at 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 9 and 2 p.m. on Dec. 10 at the Blackbox Theater, Warehouse 14. Admission to the play is free, but there is limited seating. Reservations can be made at www.mtvarts.com.
The “Stories of Knox County” oral history project can also be viewed at digital.kenyon.edu/sokc/.
