October
29, 2004
MHC
Students to Present Wommannequin at Village Commons
Ten
theatre arts students and their professor will open a window
onto the private side of life at Mount Holyoke in Wommannequin,
a continuous, 18-hour performance to be staged in a Village
Commons storefront October 29–30.
Beginning at 5 pm on Saturday, October 29 and ending at 11 am
the next day, the students and Joyce Devlin, professor of theatre
arts, will occupy the space formerly used by the 2004 U.S. Women’s
Open Public Store to perform in real time the lives of students
and their teacher. The performance is part of Theatre 215, “Performing
in the Community,” taught by Devlin.
“I think it will be a unique experience for them. Most
of them have done little performing in public,” Devlin
said. “I expect that this performance will be enriching
for them.”
She said it is her hope that both the students and the audience
of passersby gain from this glimpse into “the shared aspects
of Mount Holyoke students’ lives,” adding, “What’s
it like to be a Mount Holyoke student? I only partially know.” Signs
outside the building will explain the performance to passersby,
and members of the crew will occasionally leave the space to
carry a sign around the Commons.
Facets to be played out include eating and drinking, the intellectual
side, the playful side, the psychological side, and the practical
side.
The performance will begin with an elegant formal
tea, followed by the students dressing as men and changing back
again. They will pretend to watch a tennis match or some other
event and spend time studying (“Our students work very
hard, and I expect to see laptops and books during study time,” Devlin
said) before enjoying the traditional M & Cs, or milk and
cookies. The students will then have a party before turning in
for the night.
In the morning, breakfast will be served, followed by a class
taught by Devlin. There will then be time for exercise, and an
exercise in face painting will close the performance.
The same group of students will put on 20-minute performances
in Somerville’s Statue Park on November 5, and in Harvard
Square in Cambridge on November 6.
Devlin said the performance was inspired by a
visit to Chicago five years ago, when she saw a performance by
a group of actors who were living for a month in a storefront
in the Sears Tower. She became intrigued by the ways in which
the performers and the audiences reacted to each other, and “became
fascinated with the idea of students creating this experience.”
“The world is changing, performance is changing, and this
is an experiment,” Devlin said.
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