By Josh Hughes
On February 23 and 24, Western is putting on a play about various perspectives of ethnicity, gender identities and other forms of diversity that students at this university experience and engage with on a daily basis. Entitled “First Person: Diverse Student Stories,” the play is a collection of seven monologues that came out of interviews with Western students from a variety of backgrounds, so the finished work serves as a piece of documentary theatre. All four performances will be ASL (American Sign Language) interpreted.
Maria McLeod, assistant professor of journalism and playwright for “First Person: Diverse Student Stories,” conducted interviews with an array of Western students that come from diverse backgrounds, such as a Native American freshman who left familiar reservation life to come to university, a student and child of Middle Eastern refugees living in the post-9/11 world and an Asian student beginning to acknowledge the disparate understandings of money and wealth between her family and her friends. Additionally, there are perspectives that speak to explaining gender identity, dealing with racial profiling and maneuvering through college and the professional world as a deaf person; all of these stories come from real life experiences that McLeod has documented in Western’s own widely diverse student body. These varied narratives make up the entirety of the production, which is directed by Western alum Karee Wardrop.
This marks Wardrop and McLeod’s third production together, following an earlier rendition of “First Person” that premiered in the DUG Theatre in 2015 and another interview based production called “Body Talk: Sexual Triumphs, Trials, and Revelations” that played in Bellingham in 2013. This incarnation of “First Person,” however, will play at the Old Main Theatre at Western, which means more seating space and, in turn, more tickets available to the public.
“This play is about speaking the truth of one’s experience,” McLeod said about the inspiration for the project. “Given the current political climate, these student narratives are at the core of our national and international dialogue and debate. Their stories couldn’t be more timely.”
Instead of writing a play that incorporates multiple actors per scene, the monologue style allows for each student and each background to shine through on an individual level.
“Learning how stereotypes and initial assessments of others are so often wrong is just as valuable a learning moment as anything I could teach in a classroom,” McLeod said when asked about the passion that made her start working on the “First Person” series back in 2015, which happened to coincided with a chapter she wrote for Western’s freshman orientation class on student diversity.
“First Person: Diverse Student Stories” will be performed at 3:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. on both Thursday, February 23, and Friday, February 24 in the Old Main Theatre on campus. Tickets are free and open to the public, but seats must be reserved by calling the WWU Box Office at 650-6146.