Fresno student director looks for success in "Waiting Room"
Ryan Tubongbanua / The Collegian
Theatre arts majors Kris Cadieux, Matthew Ragan, Jacque Babb and Singleton Yost participate in a stage reading of “Waiting Room,” a play written by fellow theatre arts student Michael Oldham. This is the first time the Experimental Theatre Company has produced a student-written play. |
By Jaclyne Badal
The Collegian
Writers tend to have mothers who wish their children would pursue more lucrative, stable professions.
Fresno State senior Michael Oldham, whose play will debut at 4 p.m. today in Lab School 101, is a writer – and his mother has already registered her complaints.
“She wanted me to be an engineer,” Oldham said with a laugh. “When I told her I wanted to be a theatre major, it was like I broke her heart.”
She supports him when he acts in plays and says he needs to remember her when he has his big break, but Oldham said she is still concerned about his career choice.
He has no plans to change professions.
“I know it’s going to be a struggle, but anything that’s worth getting, you have to fight for,” Oldham said.
His bid to establish himself as a writer will gain momentum this week. Fresno State’s Experimental Theatre company plans to perform two staged readings, one today and one Saturday at 1 p.m., of his first play, “Waiting Room.”
The company has never before performed a student’s work, said Dr. Melissa Gibson, a theatre history professor who advises the group. The Experimental Theatre Company usually limits itself to one full-scale production – this semester it’s Macbeth – but made an exception for “Waiting Room.”
“We really liked it,” Gibson said. “We felt they both deserved to be produced.”
The staged reading will be a skeleton version of the play, but it will give a voice to Oldham’s work.
“It gives him the opportunity to hear actors saying words that have previously existed only on the page,” Gibson said.
“Waiting Room” is about two brothers who must decide whether or not to visit the now-hospitalized father that abandoned the pair 16 years earlier. Although not everyone has shared that particular experience, the play conveys universal emotions, said Jacque Babb, Oldham’s girlfriend and a “Waiting Room” actress.
“It’s something almost any human being on earth can relate to,” Babb said. “It brings up a lot of questions about what is family.”
Babb said she fell in love with the play as soon as she read it and enjoyed working with Oldham, who was directing for the first time.
“It’s always great to deal with a director who isn’t stifling, who doesn’t tell you to stand here at this moment, who lets you explore the character on your own,” Babb said.
Gibson said it is not easy for student directors to negotiate their responsibilities.
“You have to be an authority, but they’re your peers,” Gibson said. “As a director you need to have a lot of people skills, and I think Mike has them.”
Babb said Oldham’s management style is a reflection of his easygoing personality. He draws, watches movies and is unabashedly obsessed with comic books.
But friends and professors say Oldham is also driven, intelligent and focused – qualities that will help him as he pursues a career in show business. Their support is a welcome vote of confidence for Oldham, who wants writing to become more than a hobby.
“Any writer that says they’re doing it for the craft is lying horribly,” he said. “We’re doing it so we can live off it.”
Right now the Clovis native works four part-time jobs, but he dreams of writing for the big screen in a city like San Francisco or Chicago.
“The great goal would be to make one of those movies that bring in all the money, that the masses will love, but will also tell a bigger story.”
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