Wittenberg’s fall theater performance, “Ride the Cyclone,” has already sold out, and senior Theater Performance and Psychology double-major Abby Lanhart can’t wait to see the full production come to fruition—especially as one of the stars!
“Ride the Cyclone” is a dark comedy about six high school choir students from the fictional town of Uranium, Saskatchewan, who have all died in a roller coaster accident, and they compete to earn the chance to come back to life by sharing their stories. The story is simultaneously tragic, hilarious, and heartfelt, and attending students will doubtless enjoy the experience.
As seniors, theater performance majors like Lanhart must take a capstone course consisting of three parts: a performance with an assigned role in an upcoming show, a written defense, and an oral defense. She received her role with the announcement of the production last spring: she is playing the character Jane Doe, whose body was unidentified and unclaimed after the accident that took the lives of her fellow students decapitated her.
“Jane Doe is a very interesting role and is different from any role that I've ever played before, because she doesn't have a character,” Lanhart explains. “And the show is her discovery, finding out who she is and what it's like to not know who you are.”
Jane Doe is essentially left without an identity in the musical’s narrative, which she identifies as a unique characteristic, compared to her roster. She expresses how “all the other roles that I've portrayed here have had backstories, some of them more in depth than others, but I've got to do research on relevant history, the world of the play at the time, and read the play over and over again and find out the relationships with the other characters, and Jane Doe doesn't have that.”
Aside from her role as Jane Doe, Lanhart has had an extensive theater career at Wittenberg, being involved in 19 productions, by her count—from working backstage, to directing, to stage managing, to designing, to acting. Her directorial credits include student lab performances such as last fall’s “I & You” and the recent “The Actor’s Nightmare,” and she assistant-directed last spring’s “Witch” and “No Exit.”
Her experience with the theater department has been nothing short of stellar as both a student and an employee, working as the company operations assistant. She has immense pride in her fellow students: “It's a close-knit group of people from different majors and experience levels. We all come together to create something extraordinary. And every show that we put on, you can feel the intimacy and the relationships that we've built with each other.”
More than anything, Lanhart wants to encourage more people to join the department and enjoy the shows, whether or not they major in theater. “It's a great environment to be a part of. People who don't belong in other places belong here. And if you belong in other places, you still belong here.”
