PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARC SWENDNER, ’92 BEVERLY BARRETT
Clockwise from top left: At the gala in October, students act out Mary Doyle’s donation of land to the Catholic church. Students work together to create a human version of Sorin Oak. Playwright and Director Aaron Clay, ’04, watches from offstage. President George E. Martin addresses more than 300 donors and friends.
Bringing destiny to life M
ary Doyle stood on the hilltop that now includes Main Building and turned to her husband. “James Doyle, I must say, this hilltop has been placed here by the hands of God,” she said. “He’s got something special planned. I can feel it.” These lines open The SEU Experience: A Special Destiny, a play by Aaron Clay, ’04 (above, center), that was first performed last October at the gala celebrating the launch of A Special Destiny: The Campaign for St. Edward’s University. And while these may not be the exact words Mary Doyle spoke to her husband, Clay worked hard to capture the spirit and emotion of the university’s history. He started with his own knowledge of institutional history and then turned to St. Edward’s University: A Centennial History by Brother William Dunn, CSC (see story, page 14).
“I really wanted to get inside the characters’ minds and think about what they would have done,” said Clay. “I wanted to create characters with personalities.” The emotions of the Mary Doyle character, for example, changed 30 times as Clay reworked the lines that would best deliver his interpretation of the university’s founding mother, who donated her 498-acre farm to the Catholic Church to establish St. Edward’s. Once Clay developed the characters, he focused on directing the play. Even though he had directed previous productions, including Once Upon A Christmas Eve, which was performed at the university’s annual Festival of Lights in 2003, this performance brought new challenges because the stage was in a large tent. Clay had to figure out how tent fabric bounced sound
and refracted light. He contacted Theater Arts graduate Jeff Kyrish, ’03, who works with Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas, Nev., to learn how the group accommodates sound and light behavior in its tent shows. When it came time to write the lines, Clay read them aloud and then digitally echoed them, making sure all the lines were audible. In the process of writing the play, Clay also discovered endless stories of people who have helped shape today’s university. “This university is something special, something that is more than words. It’s something you feel when you walk on campus,” he said. “I wanted the script to show that St. Edward’s, from the beginning, has consistently moved forward as a community for excellence in education.”
by lauren montz, ’05
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