Life and Literature: A Series Worth Seeing

The 11th annual Life and Literature performance series took place Sept. 12-15 at the Corner Playhouse. The series consisted of eight short performances all by University of Missouri students. I went to see the matinee show on the last day of the series.

Overall, the acting in the performances was excellent. There was very little set design and the costumes were likely clothes the actors already own, so the actors had nothing but their own talent to rely on to tell the story. “The Raven,” adapted and performed by Laura Nelson, was extremely captivating. Nelson did a terrific job with a more modern adaption of the Edgar Allen Poe poem, and despite the overall depressing mood of the performance, she had the audience laughing several times. Even though there was no real set, Nelson made it seem as though she was really sitting in a house and I could almost see the raven perched on her door as she angrily yelled at it to get out. Sarah Senff gave a great performance in “Lament,” where she told a story about her dreams and career path (or lack of) in music. The way she was telling the story and going into detail about specific moments was so captivating that it must be her true story. She ended the performance on an inspiring note and had the whole audience singing The Little Mermaid’s “Part of Your World.” My favorite performance was “Back Bird” which was written and performed by Melissa Jackson Burns. Burns told a very relevant story about the size of woman’s body and how people constantly judge it in a hilarious way. She played the Tookie Bird who loved cookies, and everything she ate went to her back, like a bird. She was able to easily switch from playing the Tookie Bird to recounting all the various judgments other people pass on her body.

The director of the series, Joy Powell, did a good job with the performances. I thought the casting was great for each performance, although I failed to see a connection between all the performances or a reason for the order they were in. To me, it seemed like a random collection of entertaining short performances.

The whole series lacked a set, but I don’t think it took anything away from the performances. Several of the plays just used a black box for the actors to sit on when telling their story, but the most advanced set pieces were an ironing board in “My Left Breast” and some cookies in “Back Bird.” Each performance was a solo performance, except “Tug of War” which had two people, and each were no longer than 20 minutes, so a full set was not required to effectively tell the story. I was still captivated and pulled into the world of the play during each performance.