Lien recently spoke to Fordham News in Pope Auditorium—the same space where she designed a set for a Fordham production more than a decade ago—where she reflected on her career and the semester ahead.  

How did you get into set design? 

I studied architecture as an undergrad. At that time, I didn’t know much about theater, but I was interested in thinking about space in a more conceptual and sculptural way, and then applying that framework to an architectural context that exists in real space with real people. While exploring how architecture can tell a story, I stumbled into set design. 

What is it about set design that you’re passionate about?

Set design is really central to a theater production because it establishes a physical world. You can have this world that is like a laboratory for life. It can be completely surreal or fictional. It’s a way to create really complete worlds that might be something that you haven’t encountered before, something that’s a little strange—something that moves you. 

What’s something about set design that most people don’t know about? 

One of my favorite things about being a set designer is searching for materials that suit a performance’s design objective and intention. What kind of material can create this image or illusion within the needs and confines of a theatrical stage and performance? Most of the time, those materials are not designed for how I’m going to use them, so I get endlessly amused while looking for industrial materials that were made for a different purpose. For example, I might be looking for something that’s shiny but also lightweight, or something that looks like falling ash. One time, I created a huge pile of red sweeping compound for a production of Macbeth, which represented internal organs of the body. I wanted it to be red because, obviously, there are a lot of references to blood in Macbeth! 

What brought you to Fordham? 

I’ve actually worked here before. Sixteen years ago, I designed the set for a production of Top Girls, which was directed by Erica Schmidt. But it was May Adrales, the new head of the Fordham Theatre program, who brought me in as the Denzel Washington Chair. May and I have collaborated together on a number of projects in the past. One day, she emailed me and asked if I would do it, and I thought it sounded amazing. 

What are you most excited about doing here?

Fordham has really well-rounded and solid training in theater. I’ve met alumni who studied directing, design, and production, and everyone is really well-trained and grounded with a solid foundation in theater. I’m excited to challenge the notions of what theater and performance can be and really put design forward in that conversation. It’s something that I think a lot about in my own work, and I’m excited to share that with the Fordham community. 

I just had my first class today, and my students all seem amazing. Most of them are fourth-year students, so they have already been through foundational design training, and I have a good mix of students from different disciplines. I’m excited to have people with a range of experience because what I want to focus on in my class is not so much the nuts and bolts of set design, but the conceptual ideas behind design and how we can push the envelope. I have structured my course to focus on designing for performances through a more architectural lens because that’s my background and how I have approached design. I feel like the key components of thinking about space architecturally, like scale, volume, materials, light, and sequencing of spaces, are all things that you might learn in architecture school, but they’re also totally applicable to theater design. 

For their first project, my students need to find a site on campus and then conceive of a performance that might take place in that site. So I’m also training designers to think about being conceivers of an event, too, and not necessarily responding to a script. I want to treat design as more of a holistic theater-making discipline, as opposed to, here’s where I fit into it.

What professional projects are you working on? 

I just returned yesterday from opening an opera at the San Francisco Opera, which will run for the next few weeks. It’s a new John Adams opera, Antony and Cleopatra, using the Shakespeare play as the libretto, along with a few other sources. Now I’m in the midst of finalizing the design for a new revival of Sweeney Todd on Broadway, which has just been announced. 

How do you feel when you reflect on your life’s work? 

I feel incredibly blessed, lucky, and privileged to have been able to create projects on some of the scales that I have. Every project has a whole different set of circumstances, and therefore a whole new set of things to learn about and research. I’m excited to continue working in the avenues that I have worked in, as well as revisit my architectural roots and branch out into public art projects outside the theater. But mostly, I feel like this chair is such a gift and an opportunity to give back a little bit and to share some of what I’ve learned and encountered on my journey, even though there’s still a lot to learn. 

What advice do you have for the next generation of theater makers? 

What constitutes a performance? Space, event, and spectators, but that can happen anywhere … inside a theater, but also a street. As long as you have some action that’s happening and somebody who’s watching it, it could be defined as a form of theater. But what’s amazing about theater is that anything is possible. The reason that I transitioned from architecture to theater is that in the latter world, you have the magic of illusion. You can do things like figure out how to rig a piece of concrete so that it appears to be floating. So my advice to students is to be tenacious. Pursue the impossible, because in theater, anything is possible. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Just a few years before, Pagani had started feeling strange intermittent symptoms—numbness in her legs, tingling in her arms and torso, vertigo, and loss of taste, sense of touch, and hearing. After being told by several doctors that what she was feeling was either emotional or imaginary, one finally guessed that what she was suffering from was multiple sclerosis. MRI scans were not widely available at the time, Pagani explains, so he couldn’t confirm the theory. “But he thought it was my first exacerbation. I was in my 20s and burning the candle at both ends, but he told me to take a month off and do nothing.”

So she did, and her symptoms went away—until that morning in July a few years later, when everything changed. “It took a year to start coming back from that attack,” Pagani says. But she also credits that time with leading her to Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service.

Pagani had studied psychology at Boston University, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1970. She knew she eventually wanted to enroll in a graduate program, but she also felt she had limited options. “There were really only three career tracks you took as a woman at that time,” she says. “The sight of blood made me shake, so nursing was out. I knew I wouldn’t be able to travel like I wanted to if I became a teacher. So I became a secretary.”

Pagani postponed graduate school for several years, until she became symptomatic. “I started peer counseling in between attacks and hospital stays, and I knew I wanted to study social work. So I said, ‘This is it. Once this damn disease stabilizes, I’m going to grad school.’

“I had to turn a negative into a positive,” Pagani says. “It sounds trite, but that’s how you survive.”

A friend who was pursuing a Master of Social Work at Fordham, Joyce Genovese Drummond, GSS ’89, encouraged her to consider the program. In her late 30s and with her MS under better control, Pagani began to pursue her dream.

For her, it was more than just the academic strength of the Fordham program that changed her. It was the way the faculty and staff supported her when she had recurring MS attacks or when she doubted herself. You would never know it hearing her now, but back then she felt the disease had sapped her of her characteristic energy.

“I thought my life was over; I didn’t have any confidence in myself,” Pagani says. “And at Fordham I had people cheering me on.”

After graduating in 1991, Pagani joined the staff of the Jewish Guild for the Blind as the only social worker at the nonprofit’s Yonkers location, where she worked until her retirement in 2014. “Helping people maximize what they’ve got even in the view of different abilities energizes me,” Pagani says of her chosen career path, which was informed by her own struggles. “Yes, you’ve lost a lot. But there are things you can do.”

The Westchester native has also stayed in touch with Fordham throughout the years. A lifelong theater buff, she has particularly enjoyed taking advantage of the numerous cultural and entertainment events sponsored by the Office of Alumni Relations, including a special tour of the American Museum of Natural History in January. She has also been recognized as a member of the 1841 Society for her generous decision to include Fordham in her will, and has attended the group’s annual luncheons.

Pagani says she hopes to keep giving back to Fordham and to her local community. “I want to ramp up my volunteerism,” she says.

“I want to be connected on a deeper level. These places have played so heavily in my life. And I’m not even close to being done yet.”

Fordham Five

What are you most passionate about?
Seeing the results of my mentoring. For at least 15 years, I had social work students as interns, and teaching them was a big aspect of my job and my life. I’m still in touch with many of them. Some were challenging. But when you have good experiences in life, you don’t hold them inside. You have to pay it forward.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
My mom, who used to call herself “a wise old owl,” was an extraordinary role model. If not for her and my dad, I could have succumbed to the MS, because I had some pretty dark years. But my mom always told me not to give up. “Don’t give up, because there’s always something you can do,” she said. And boy was she right. Years later, my neurologist told me that he didn’t think I would ever be able to walk again. But I did. And I attribute that to the love that surrounded me and to my mother.

What’s your favorite place in New York City? In the world?
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is definitely my happy place. That and the Theater District. The arts, the restaurants—oh my God, it’s the arts capital of the world. The energy is unrivaled. It really is. You just feel it.

I’ve traveled a lot, so it’s tough to pick a favorite place in the world of all the places I’ve been. I’ll give you my favorite place and the one that made the biggest impression. For my favorite, there is a place my cousin took me in France. I have cousins in Paris and in Provence, and they take me places that other people just don’t know about. The last time I went they took me to a place called Carrières de Lumières, the Quarries of Lights. It’s a huge, huge cave in the Provence area—which is one of my favorite places—and you enter the cave and there is an art show projected onto the walls, all set to music. And they do different themes. It’s a totally immersive experience that I’ve never had anywhere else. It’s amazing.

But there are also some trips that impress you and stay with you always in a different way. Like last May, we went on a cruise through six countries in Eastern Europe: Czech Republic, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria. And when we were in Budapest, along the Danube—I’m emotional talking about it—there is a memorial. You see along the river a line of iron shoes that go on for what seemed at least half a mile. And it’s in honor of the thousands of people shot by the Nazis on the bank of the Danube, who were made to take off their shoes before they were killed. They made a lasting sculpture to these souls. That made the biggest impression on me.

Name a book that has had a lasting influence on you.
I have a few. The first is one I was assigned in my clinical psychology class at Fordham, Listening with the Third Ear by Theodor Reik. I never, ever forgot that book. I still have it on my bookshelf, and I continue to lean on it throughout my life in different situations. It’s about listening to what somebody’s not saying to you. It’s me with my work and my relationships, and I think it’s indispensable for anyone in a helping profession.

The other two are both historical novels: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. The first made me wish I lived in the 1890s so I could have seen the Chicago World’s Fair. That they were able to do this, this incredible creation against all odds—that sort of thing really impresses me. The second is about a blind French girl and a German soldier against the backdrop of World War II, and I loved it so much that when we went to France I took two or three trains from Paris to get to the little town it’s set in, Saint-Malo. 

Who is the Fordham grad or professor you admire most?
Marc Miringoff, who was the dean of students for GSS when I was there, and his assistant, Amy Miller. One of my first classes was with Marc, Social Policy. It was a class nobody wanted to take, because it was dry, but he instilled such humor into it. He was a terrific professor. He gave me my first A, and that meant a lot; it helped me keep going. I didn’t know if I could do it at that point, I felt I had so many strikes against me. Marc also used to host a folk night on Fridays, and even though I hate folk music it led to incredible bonding for all of us at the time. He made everything fun. And I was always in Amy’s office, telling her when I wasn’t sure I had the energy to do this. She showed me I could. They helped me on my way and had a tremendous impact on me, the two of them.

In commemoration of the tragedy, the Magis Theatre Company is staging an off-Broadway production of Miracle in Rwanda, a play that tells one woman’s story of survival.

The one-woman show is based on Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwanda Holocaust, Immaculée Ilibagiza’s 2006 memoir in which she describes how she survived the genocide by hiding in a three-by-four-foot bathroom with six other women. Leslie Lewis created the play with Edward Vilga nearly a decade ago, and she has performed it around the world since then.

This new production marks the first time another actress has taken on the one-woman show. Rwandan native Malaika Uwamahoro, FCLC ’17, plays Ilibagiza and about 10 other characters, including the other women in hiding, the Hutu pastor who protected them, and the machete-wielding killer who tried to find them. (Uwmahoro’s understudy is Nisarah Lewis, FCLC ’15, a fellow Fordham Theatre program alumna.)

The show’s director, George Drance, S.J., an artist in residence at Fordham and the artistic director of the Magis Theatre Company, had worked with Uwamahoro at Fordham and suggested her for the role.

“When Leslie told me that she would be passing on the role to someone else, Malaika was the first person who came to mind,” he told Rwanda’s New Times. “She was always a strong performer in her work at Fordham. I knew she had the strength, the dedication, and more than anything else, the soul to tell the story of Immaculée.”

Uwamahoro was familiar with Ilibagiza’s book before she took on the role. “Being a Rwandan, you hear stories of survival all the time,” she told WFUV’s Robin Shannon on a recent episode of Fordham Conversations. In fact, Uwamahoro’s own grandmother fled to Uganda from her native Rwanda in 1959 to escape the growing persecution of the Tutsi people by the Hutu at that time. But Ilibagiza’s experience was unique, she felt.

“She was there, she had fear all around her, but she was ‘safe,’” because she was hidden, Uwamahoro explained. Instead of running for safety, she was stuck in a small and silent space, “hearing horror and smelling horror.”

Uwamahoro was also taken by Ilibagiza’s message of moving forward with compassion. “So it is a story about survival, but it’s also an incredible story about forgiveness.”

Rehearsing and performing the piece led Uwamahoro to contemplate how much of history is shaped by individual choices. “What it’s shown me is that these things are not that foreign. These things are very accessible. If I wanted to, if I put my energy to being a killer, I could become one. It’s not so far, it’s not so foreign. And if I wanted to have integrity and save people from harm, like the pastor did, that’s not so far from me either,” she told Shannon. “So what I’m recognizing is that these are conscious choices that people make.”

Father Drance was especially inspired by Ilibagiza’s views on the rosary, “which was really the instrument that helped her get through, survive, keep going, keep hopeful,” he told Shannon, “even though everything around her was everything but.”

He believes the play’s message is universal. “It’s a story of courage, of forgiveness, of hope,” he said. “It’s really a story that is transformative. And I look at the world right now, and I said if there’s one thing we’re in need of, it’s a little transformation.”

Miracle in Rwanda opened on April 4 and is scheduled to run until May 11 at the Lion Theatre.

On their last day on the island, several Fordham alumni, staff, and friends spent the morning volunteering at La Fondita de Jesús, a local organization serving people who are homeless, including many affected by the hurricane. In the evening, they had the opportunity to attend the hit Broadway musical Hamilton, brought to Puerto Rico by creator Lin-Manuel Miranda to support local arts and culture initiatives that promote tourism and economic recovery. And, thanks to Fordham Law alumna and adjunct professor Vanessa Nadal, who is married to Miranda, the group also enjoyed a private post-show reception.

Before taking the stage at the guild’s annual awards dinner in Los Angeles, Alda was introduced by Tom Hanks, who worked with Alda on the 2015 film Bridge of Spies. Hanks saluted him “not just for his decades of work and praiseworthy credits but for how he has shown us all who we are and what we all can be.”

He said the choices Alda has made throughout his six-decade career—as an actor, writer, director, activist, and philanthropist—have reflected “the time and the tenor of our troubled world and of our human natures.”

As part of his introduction, Hanks presented a three-minute highlight reel of the actor’s work through the years. The clips, drawn from some of Alda’s most memorable film and TV appearances, showcased his everyman appeal, his wise and wisecracking wit, and his gifts for both comedy and drama.

“You know, it’s really hard to describe to you what it feels like to look out and see my fellow actors—my colleagues, my heroes—welcome me up here like this. It’s an extraordinary feeling,” Alda said upon receiving the SAG Life Achievement Award.

‘See the World Through Another Person’s Eyes’

He said the honor comes at a time when he’s been reflecting on what it means to be a member of “our brotherhood and sisterhood of actors.”

“When we get a chance to act,” he said, “it’s our job, at least in part, to get inside a character’s head and to search for a way to see life from that person’s point of view—another person’s vision of the world—and then to let an audience experience that.

“It may never have been more urgent to see the world through another person’s eyes than when a culture is divided so sharply,” he added. “Actors can help, at least a little, just by doing what we do.”

For Alda, who turned 83 on Jan. 28, that means continuing to act, both on TV (most recently in Ray Donovan) and in films.

It also means passing along the lessons he’s learned about the art and science of good communication. That’s the subject of his most recent book, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? and of Clear + Vivid, a podcast he launched last summer to share “conversations with some of the most interesting people I know about how we communicate and relate to the most important people in our lives.”

Last summer, Alda revealed in an interview on CBS that several years ago he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a neurodegenerative disorder. But the diagnosis hasn’t slowed him down, he said. Since then, “I’ve acted, I’ve given talks … I started this new podcast. … It hasn’t stopped my life at all. I’ve had a richer life than I’ve had up until now.”

Six Decades of Distinctions

After graduating from Fordham with a degree in English in 1956, Alda joined an improvisational theater company and later worked on Broadway and in Hollywood before landing the role for which he is perhaps best known.

In 1972, he was cast as Captain Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce, the cocky and insubordinate but brilliant and beloved Army doctor in the TV show M*A*S*H—the long-running anti-war comedy series set during the Korean War. For his work on the show, Alda earned five Emmy Awards in 11 years, three for acting and one each for writing and directing. He is the only performer to earn Emmys in each of those three categories for work on the same series.

More recently, Alda earned another remarkable distinction: In a single year, 2005, he was nominated for three major awards—an Oscar (for his role as a corrupt U.S. senator in The Aviator), an Emmy (for his turn as a presidential candidate on The West Wing), and a Tony (for his work in the Broadway revival of Glengarry Glen Ross). That’s something only five other performers have done. But Alda one-upped them—in 2005, he also published the first of his three bestselling books, a memoir titled Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, and Other Things I’ve Learned.

For years, Alda has helped broaden the public’s understanding of science—as host of the long-running PBS series Scientific American Frontiers and through the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, which he established in 2009 to help scientists and health professionals “communicate complex topics in clear, vivid, and engaging ways.”

He has received numerous awards for his work in communicating science, including the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal.

Fordham has honored Alda on several occasions, inducting him into its Hall of Honor in 2012 and presenting him with an honorary degree in 1978, when he delivered the commencement address.

Reflecting on his undergraduate days at Fordham, he once expressed gratitude for his professors, “some very generous people … who invited me to step up and shake hands with my own brain.”

“Since then,” he said, “I’ve often thought that if people can think clearly and use their language well, then their education has been a lucky gift and they will probably find themselves useful to the world, and the world to them.”

Watch Alan Alda’s acceptance speech at the 25th Annual SAG Awards

The musical comedy series, Rachel Unraveled, started as the passion project of Rachel Ravel and Austin Spero, two theater majors at Fordham College at Lincoln Center who also star in the series. Since its premiere last year, the two earned a Summer Research Grant from Fordham that allowed them to turn their dream into a reality.

With the help of fellow Fordham students and professors, the two wrote, produced, and shot the four episodes about trying to make it as an actor in New York City. Now you can find a new episode of Rachel Unraveled on broadwayworld.com every Wednesday.

Read more about how Rachel Unraveled began.
Watch episodes of Rachel Unraveled.

Watch the trailer below!

But before they could throw themselves into the classic protest anthem, which opens the production, award-winning actress Regina Taylor—the play’s director and playwright— had a few guidelines.

“I want your total commitment to every moment,” said Taylor, who is the Denzel Washington Chair in Theatre. “Your total commitment is very important as we are piecing things together.”

Accompanied by the sounds of folksy guitar and ukulele riffs, the young actors clapped and stomped powerfully as they sang.

Some lyrics were as moving as they were prophetical: “There’s a battle outside/And it is ragin’/It’ll soon shake your windows/And rattle your walls/For the times they are a-changin’.”

For Taylor, the song sets the tone of Magnolia, which opens at Pope Auditorium on Oct. 5 and has performances on Oct. 6, Oct. 7, and Oct. 11 through Oct. 13.

 She wrote Magnolia during the 2008 presidential election when Barack Obama made history as the first black president of the United States. It originally premiered at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, where the Golden Globe winner, whose credits include I’ll Fly Away, Courage Under Fire, and Romeo and Juliet, has served as an artistic associate for 20 years.

A Season of Social Consciousness

Though set in 1963 Atlanta, Georgia and inspired by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s 1903 play, The Cherry Orchard, Taylor believes Magnolia challenges viewers to examine issues on race, gender, and class in today’s society. The play is part of Fordham Theatre’s mainstage season, What Does It Mean to Be an American?, and is one of many plays that Taylor is producing outside of the Fordham community this season that centers on resistance.

“It’s a privilege to be a writer in these times [and]sieve through the great changes happening right now to create work tied to social consciousness,” said Taylor.

While Magnolia’s main characters—Thomas, a black businessman and Lily, a white heiress— seem like they come from different walks of life, Taylor said they have more in common than you’d think.

Lily, played by Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC) junior Addison Thompson, is a bohemian who was born on the Magnolia estate. She leaves Atlanta to escape the confines of being a white woman in the south 1963. When the matriarch of the family falls ill, Lily must return to confront her complicated legacy and try to save the estate from foreclosure.

Born on the same estate is Thomas, played by FCLC senior Eric Taylor. He now lives in segregated Atlanta Georgia in the affluent black neighborhood of Sweet Auburn.

Thomas vows to never return to Magnolia because of its memories. It is where his great grandparents were slaves and where his brother was lynched.

“He wants to chop down every one of those [magnolia]trees, and burn down the plantation where he came from,” said Taylor.

Getting at the Root

Taylor said the magnolia trees are symbolic because it also calls attention to the deeply layered and tainted soil that both Lily and Thomas come from.

She emphasized that the magnolia trees have a root ball intertwined with several shoots, which then bear trees of several hues.

Like the root balls, we are all joined sharing the struggles of freedom— both good and bad.

“Even as we try to chop, burn, or erase the awful parts of the past, we may not be able to dig up all the root balls,” she said. “They shoot back up in time. Each generation must wrestle with the past and the struggles of freedom and equality.”

About halfway through Alan Alda’s new book is an endearing story about empathy. Once, hailing a cab in New York City, Alda was greeted with a potentially irksome “Where are you going?” from the driver, as if he had to “audition” for the ride, Alda writes.

But Alda, trying to empathize, looked in the driver’s eyes and saw no hostility. “It’s the end of his shift, I thought. He wants to get home,” he writes. He got in the cab, helped direct the driver, and offered to get out a few blocks early. Impressed by his kindness, the cabbie refused—“‘No! You’re a nice person. I’m taking you to the door.’”

That’s one of Alda’s many stories about how people can relate and communicate better by becoming more attuned to one another. Alda has long experience in this area as an accomplished director, writer, and actor; his many honors and accolades include six Emmy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, and an Oscar nomination.

But, as he describes in the book, he faced a special challenge when interviewing scientists as host of Scientific American Frontiers on PBS. Responsive listening helped him steer the conversation clear of science jargon and foster a dialogue that would engage a television audience. The experience set him on a journey that led to him founding the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University and building bridges to connect the sciences with other disciplines, including theater.

In one exercise at the University of Southern California, he found that engineering students’ research presentations were markedly better after they played improvisational games—such as working together to “sculpt” an imaginary object—that help actors get in sync with one another.

One student had seemed “married” to his PowerPoint presentation, Alda writes. “After improvising, he was able to put down his remote control and speak from the heart.”

The book touches on many other topics, including autism and the doctor-patient relationship. And a continuing theme is the power of the kind of empathy that enabled Alda to connect with a cabbie and get where he needed to go.

Watch Alan Alda speaking about empathy here:

Produced by L’Atelier Theatre Productions, Les Bonnes (The Maids), which runs through March 19, is based on a provocative 1947 play by French dramatist Jean Genet. It follows two sisters working as chambermaids, Solange (Hélène Godec) and Claire (Laura Lassy Townsend), as they plot an uprising against their master madame (Cloé Xhauflaire).

The experimental production, directed by Oliver Henzler, is performed in French with English subtitles created by Fordham College at Lincoln Center students Lucy O’Brien and Mariam Moustafa; and Fordham College at Rose Hill student Ellen Thome.

The students joined the Les Bonnes production team as part of an independent internship with Godec, who teaches courses in French theater and business culture. An accomplished French actress and oral communications expert, Godec runs a weekly atelier in French for Fordham students. Her credits include Dialogues en soliloque, Les nuits de la colère, and Au dessus des chiffons.

Working with Godec on the poetic Les Bonnes, provided a real-world experience in theater and English/French translation, the students said.

“The most challenging part happens as we run the subtitles when the actors change lines or skip a scene,” said Moustafa. “We start running through the PowerPoint [and]it is literally a mini panic attack trying to match the English subtitles with the actress’ lines in the play. But after the show, we laugh at these moments and we make sure to do our best the following show.”

O’Brien said the fast-paced nature of the play also has its perks.

“My translation skills have gotten infinitely better because I had to think on the spot,” she said.

Through the play’s physical movements and the students’ English subtitles, English-speaking theatergoers are able to immerse themselves in the play’s riveting storyline, the actress said.

“You can watch the performance without understanding every spoken word,” said Godec.

“We don’t approach our roles on a psychologically realistic level. I enjoyed exploring my character in a very visceral way.”

In the upcoming Calderón’s Two Dreams, the Magis Theatre Company will perform both versions of Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s famous play. Opening night of the production’s limited run at LaMaMa next month is already sold out.

In the better-known version, written in 1635, a woman named Rosaura travels to a foreign kingdom to defend her honor, where she becomes entangled in a conflict between King Basilio and Prince Segismundo, the son he has kept locked in a tower since birth because of a prophecy that claimed he would be an evil ruler.

Like Hamlet, this first version examines questions of freedom and choice in a confusing reality. But in the 1677 edition, the setting moves from a foreign kingdom to the court of the universe. The original play asks, can this prince be a worthy ruler? The later version wonders, are humans fitting caretakers of the universe?

During a preview of the production at the Sheen Center last December, Michael Zampelli, S.J., GSAS ’86, this year’s Loyola Chair in Theology at Fordham, explained that this shift seems appropriate for a Jesuit-educated man who started his life as a soldier but ended it as a priest.

“Calderón lived quite a life of contrast himself, as a soldier but with this grand interest in theology and philosophy and all of the ultimate questions,” Father Zampelli said. “There’s this great interest in exploring human nature but also giving vent to the more passionate side
[in the first version]. What we get [in the second version]is a sense of the fragility of human life.”

Participating in this dual production has been an actual dream for Dennis Vargas, FCLC ’88, who plays King Basilio (and his parallel character, Power, in the second version). Vargas has been interested in the play since his student days at Fordham, and in 2008 he had the opportunity to do the simultaneous translation for New York City’s Repertorio Español production of the 1635 version. But this is his first time performing the piece on stage. “I’m too old now to play Segismundo,” he said, “but to be able to play Basilio is amazing, like getting to play Claudius or Prospero.”

Vargas said he didn’t know there was a 1677 version of the play until he auditioned for the company. “These are two versions of the same play, written about 40 years apart, and seeing them together you can understand how Calderón saw his life when he was a young man and compare it to how he saw life when he was older,” Vargas explained.

Beyond the excitement of finally performing the piece, Vargas was thrilled by the unique opportunity to help with the translation. George Drance, S.J., an artist in residence at Fordham and Magis’ artistic director, collaborated with Alfredo Galván to translate the 1677 edition, which had never before been translated into English. Early on in the two years the company spent working on the production, they also decided to create a new English translation of the 1635 edition.

“Crazy company that we are,” said Father Drance, “I asked the actors what they felt were the most important lines of their scenes. We looked at all sorts of existing translations, and we created our own from there.”

In another first, Magis will be performing both versions back-to-back during the run, a unique opportunity for the group, which, according to Drance, is known as “the theater company that takes on challenges that other people are afraid of.” It’s a philosophy that Vargas says “brought me back to being at Fordham in a way that I hadn’t been in 25 years, to really feeling things.”

Based on the creative preview seen at the Sheen Center event, Magis’ final production is sure to be a dream come true for theater fans.

Calderon’s Two Dreams will run from February 9­ through February 26 at the Ellen Stewart Theatre in New York City.

These are some of the questions Weiner explores in Kingdom Come, her modern, heartfelt, and hilariously dark off-Broadway debut, which premiered this fall at Roundabout Theatre Company’s home for emerging artists, Roundabout Underground.

“It’s right at my sweet spot of what I’m interested in writing about,” Weiner says, “which are the things in life that are hard to look at but also make us the most human, and that we need to laugh at in order to get through, in order to see what’s really happening.”

At the center of Weiner’s play is catfishing—using a fictional identity to lure someone into a relationship online—a phenomenon previously explored in documentaries and even an MTV reality series. The plot follows the relationship between two thirtysomethings: Samantha, who is confined to her bed but posing online as an athletic man, and Layne, whose online dating profile says she’s an adventurous flight attendant though in reality she is  almost immobilized by her many anxieties.

Throughout the play, the audience is brought into their private conversations that take place online. The messages are projected onto the walls of the theater and read aloud by the actors.

Unlike many other catfishing situations, Samantha and Layne develop a real connection. So what’s most surprising about the play is that, despite the complexity and pain caused by the situation, there is no villain. In fact, there’s a lot of laughter that comes from the audience recognizing themselves in these characters.

Weiner initially set out to become an actor, but during her undergraduate days at Boston University, “writing would sort of creep up in little nooks and crannies,” she says. Being a playwright makes her feel more exposed and vulnerable than performing on stage, she says. But once she embraced it, “I was able to take my creativity by the reigns in a way that I wasn’t able to with acting.”

After college, Weiner worked with an education theater company in Chicago for a few years before enrolling in Fordham’s MFA program in playwriting.

“It was such an amazing opportunity,” she says of the program, which Fordham offers in collaboration with Primary Stages. “To have this support system, basically an incubator in New York City, is incredible. There are only two of us in each class, so it was just me and Eljon Wardally that first year. We got so much access to professional theater, and doing two productions in two years is a great and unique opportunity.”

One of Weiner’s two graduate productions, Horse Girls, led to a collaboration with director Sarah Krohn, who helped Weiner mount a professional production of that play off-off-Broadway of the same show in 2015, shortly after she completed the program.

Horse Girls, like most of Weiner’s plays, marinated for a time before it was written. “I like to sit with an idea for a while,” she says, “and it feels like a little secret. I think about it and I feel like things start to pop into my life that are reminiscent of it, like articles I read or people I meet.”

But Kingdom Come was different. Inspired by her own frustrations with online dating—with that mismatch between the people she got to know online and the people she would later meet—and her friend’s experience being catfished, “this story kind of spilled out of me,” she says. She wrote the first draft in three days, and the spine of the play remained intact throughout all her revisions.

As Kingdom Come opened at Roundabout Underground, Weiner was already working on another script for the Playwrights Program she’s enrolled in at Julliard. She also continues to work with children through the educational theater company Story Pirates in New York City. Whatever she works on, she says, she aims to “write with humor and heart.”

“It’s been a really exciting, fun journey, and I’m still discovering my voice and accepting who I am and that what I have to say is important. Kingdom Come is really my musing on modern-day loneliness,” Weiner says. “I hope the audience leaves questioning what they know, and that the play is a mirror for their own lives and experiences.”

Kingdom Come will run from November 2 to December 18, 2016, at the Black Box Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre. Hear more about the show in the video below.