Student’s first solo play to be weird and risky

Sade Tavarez
Thu, 19 Nov 2015 00:00:19 +0000
Arts & Life, Theater, Iris and Witness, Jennifer Schlueter, Kelly Moyer, lab series, OSU theatre

The Lab Series is well-known for putting on performances that can steer away from the norm or traditional plays that people might be familiar with. That’s something Kelly Moyer has taken full advantage of.

Moyer, a fifth-year in film studies and theatre, is the creator of “Iris and Witness,” which is a solo play that Moyer will perform.

The performance is about an artist who is greeted by a mysterious and wise entity that likes to poke fun and challenge the artist. The entity also questions the artist on his career choice and what he’s doing with his life.

“After an initial discussion, the play becomes a montage of segments featuring different characters and different art mediums,” Moyer said.

Moyer created three art mediums — a photo story, animation story and a fairytale — that the play will utilize.

For the most part, the characters don’t have names and will remain nameless for the entire play, but each characters will be completely different so as to prevent confusion.

“‘Iris’ is actually referring to the aperture muscle in the eyeball. It’s a more literal sense rather than somebody’s name. Although, I suppose anyone could interpret the artist’s name as Iris,” Moyer said.

Coordinator Jennifer Schlueter described the Lab Series as a student-driven and department-nurtured production series. “We love to support the weird and the innovative and the risky, and Kelly’s piece is all three,” she said.

Up until now, he has been helping behind the scenes and dealing with a hectic school schedule, so when the opportunity presented itself for Moyer to write his own play, he took it.

“With the Lab Series, I’m really familiar with the space and the technical aspects and how I can use them, so I decided to apply as a debut performance,” Moyer said. “It was really like a ‘Why not’ kind of scenario. For the last several months, I’ve been conceiving (the play) and putting it together.”

“Iris and Witness” will be shown for two days, the norm for all Lab Series plays. The showings will be Monday and Tuesday, both at 7 p.m. in the New Works Lab located at the Drake Performance and Event Center. All Lab Series plays have limited seating and are free of charge for OSU students and the general public.