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High school teachers staging unique play Oct. 2-3

Audience will walk from room to room while scenes play simultaneously.

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By Elizabeth Hagedorn, Contributing Writer 3:42 PM Thursday, September 17, 2009

Talawanda High School English teachers Billy Simms, Ryan Steffen and Matt Lykins recently found an outlet for their creativity by producing a play entitled, “Another Time, Another Room.”

Simms, who produced the play, said they came up with the name “Juice” for their production company as a shortened version of the phrase “creative juices,” which was already taken by another group.

“The play came first, and then we needed to have a company to do the play, and that is where Juice came from,” Simms said.

According to Simms, the play is made up of two characters and six scenes. The scenes play simultaneously in a loop, and the audience walks from room to room to view each scene in no particular order. Four of the six scenes are live action, while one is taped, and one is performed by puppets.

Simms said he got the idea for the play from the book “The Unfortunates” by B.S. Johnson.

“The book comes in a box with each chapter individually bound. There is one booklet that says read first and one that says read last and you can read the other chapters in any order. I wanted to put that idea into a play,” Simms said.

Simms said the audience is supposed to create their own order of events, which makes every experience independent. After Simms decided on the structure of the play in November 2008, he went to Lykins to write a script.

“I had no intentions of ever writing a play, but I thought his idea was interesting and started writing,” Lykins said.

When Lykins got sick during Christmas break, he used his extra time to write “Another Time, Another Room.”

After Lykins would write each scene, he would send it to Simms and Steffen.

“It involved a level of collaboration that was fun, but we weren’t used to it. But it is probably why the play was actually finished,” Lykins said.

The story involves a well-to-do widower and his housekeeper having the same conversation over and over, which makes them re-examine themselves, their relationship and the nature of intimacy itself.

“It is about relationships, theatre, art, secrets we share and those we don’t,” Simms said.

After the script was finished, Steffen, the director, began casting and putting the concepts on stage. The actors in the play consist of coworkers who liked the idea, people in community theatre and former students.

“Matt writes and I think about the audience, make it feel like a show, and mess around with the order. I had to think about the characters’ motivations, represent what Matt thinks and then guide the actors in that direction,” Steffen said.

Steffen said the play is something different because it is their ideas and their creation.

“It is playing with the idea of who is the actor and who is the audience,” Steffen said.

Simms said Juice has nothing concrete for its next performance because the group wants to finish this play first.

“We hope to create more visual arts shows as a way of expressing the strong creative elements in Oxford and provide an outlet for creativity,” Lykins said.

Performances of “Another Time, Another Room” will be at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 2 and 3 at the Oxford Community Arts Center. Tickets are $10. Only 100 tickets will be sold for each night. To purchase tickets, call (513) 255-6371 or visit the Community Arts Center.

Lykins, Simms and Steffen recommend the play for mature audiences.

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