It’s a Wednesday night – two nights before the big opening. And Stephanie Leasure isn’t on stage.

She’s not under the bright lights she’s used to. She isn’t wearing stage makeup or playing to all sides of the audience in Charleston’s Village Theatre. She’s not projecting her voice so people in the back can hear.

She’s sitting in the dark, her left arm around a chair back. Her tense right hand clutches a pen held up to her mouth.

Her legs are crossed. A yellow notebook tablet sits open on her lap with notes scribbled on it.

But she laughs the hardest, with a deep belly laugh, at the subtle jokes rehearsed on stage.

She’s the director.

Leasure is one of three student directors for “An Evening of Student Directed One Acts” opening tonight.

The senior theater major is directing “Take Five,” a comedy by Westley M. Pederson.

The other directors of the night are senior theater majors she knows well.

Scott Podraza is directing “‘dentity Crisis,” a black comedy by Christopher Durang.

Katy Hawley is directing “Haiku,” a drama by Katherine Snodgrass.

Last spring, each student chose three one-act performances they wanted to direct. Then they were asked to submit two more. The plays were ranked and, surprisingly to each student director, they each were given their first choice.

Hawley’s current production wasn’t even in the running for her first set of choices. It wasn’t until she was asked to submit two more options that she fell in love.

She’s used to playing comedy, so a different tone would be more of a challenge, she said.

Auditions are held the first few weeks of the semester for all fall productions. Each production has three nights of dress rehearsals before the opening.

But before any of that, the director analyzes his or her script to understand every aspect and begin to develop characters.

The director must deeply understand the script and then create a real, believable atmosphere, Hawley said. Then the director makes the actors understand the script, goes over movement and character motions and helps them memorize their lines.

Then each actor must become the character and add his or her own ideas and feelings.

“That’s where acting starts,” Podraza said.

During dress rehearsals, the director takes notes on each performance. That feedback is then given to the actors to better the performance.

Sometimes actors do things in front of an audience that they wouldn’t normally do, Hawley said.

She compared it to a math class. First actors must learn a formula. Then they take that formula and apply it and make it work, Hawley said. The same thing goes for a script and production.

If something is done well, the actors hear about it. The opposite is also true – if something doesn’t work, it can still be changed or reworked.

Leasure said many of her notes are about the lines. Directing forces a person to memorize the entire script, so it’s noticeable when a line is changed or messed up.

But the hardest part is letting go.

“It’s so difficult, being an actor yourself,” Hawley said.

The three agreed that it’s hard to not just jump in the scene and do it yourself to show an actor the desired mood or feeling.

“You just have to let it go,” she said.

Student-directed acts are different in ways other than the director. This production has no set or costume designers.

The actors wear clothes from their own wardrobes.

“It’s all very basic,” Leasure said.

Casting for all the fall productions are done the first week of school. For this production, the actors and director have rehearsed Sunday through Thursday for about an hour and a half.

All three directors were involved in the previous play, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” They’ve performed together in five different productions.

The trio actually auditioned together for their first play freshman year.

Hawley even remembers making Podraza go first in auditions, “because he was the boy!”

And now the three agree they’ll stay in touch after graduation.

Podraza plans to go back home to the Chicago area and audition, but he’ll eventually apply for graduate school.

Hawley plans to attend graduate school and earn her master’s in fine arts.

Leasure plans to move to Chicago and audition for any and everything. She said it will be a hard transition after college acting and spending four years with the same theater family.

But all that is moved to the background for opening night.

The students won’t really know how they’ve done until the audience tells them, said Jerry Eisenhour, a faculty member of the theater department. It’s just rehearsal until the audience is there for a real reaction.

Students practice the opening act “dentity Crisis” at the Village Theater Thursday evening. This is the first of three student directed One Act Plays being performed today through Sunday. Carrie Hollis/The Daily Eastern News

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