Issue date: 4/3/09 Section: The Verge

A new life is born into the classic story "The Princess and the Pea," being performed in the Dounda Fine Arts Center on April 6. Cast member Kirk Dulin plays multiple roles during the performance including 'Puchin' seen here. (Cari Wafford/The Daily Eastern News)

The Eastern theatre arts department's production of "Commedia: Princess and the Pea" will be performed for the public at the Theatre in the Doudna Fine Arts Center at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

After its two showings for general audiences, it will be shown eight times over the next four days for local elementary school kids.

The curtain opens with the four cast members pretending to be in a traveling acting troupe walking across the stage with their wagon.

Changing "The Princess and the Pea" into a play-within-a-play is just one of the ways that this production has grown and changed throughout its rehearsal period.

The process of adding content to a play through practice and improvisation is typical of the commedia style, a type of informal street theater that has its roots in Italy.

The play's director John Oertling, chair of the theatre arts department, drew many comparisons from Eastern's commedia to the traditional Italian ones.

"The nature of commedia is physical," Oertling said. "It is a very physical play, lots of running around, tumbling, tripping all those kinds of things, those kind of clowning aspects."

Other changes made to the play were made to make it easier for children to understand.

Stage manager Paul Martin, a theatre arts major with teacher's certification, said that there were several Italian words in the original script that were swapped out for English ones. Other changes are less subtle.

The script calls for a magnifying glass at one point. So prop master Josh Anderson, a pre-business management major, was tasked with converting an old tennis racket into an oversized magnifying glass.

Each cast member is responsible for playing several different characters. To make it easier to tell each character apart, several masks have been made.

Cast member Katie Kruzic said that participating in the Faustwork Mask Theatre workshops helped her handle herself with a mask.

"I feel like he (Robert Faust) gave a lot of insight on that while your wearing a mask, bigger movements doesn't mean that an audience will understand it better," Kruzic said. "Sometimes its the little things that make a difference."

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