“A Strindberg Café,” two short plays tucked into one production, will become a night of revelations where secrets will be unfolded.

The two plays are short acts written by one of Sweden’s most celebrated playwrights, August Strindberg.

The acts are titled “Mother Love” and “The Stronger.” The show starts at 7:30 p.m. Friday. 

In “Mother Love,” Daughter, the protagonist, is an aspiring actress dealing with an overbearing mother, named Mother, who never ceases to remind her of their dependency for one another. Daughter wants to leave Mother but always remains at her side. 

Chynna Miller, a sophomore theatre arts major and the actress who plays Daughter, said her character lacks the growth and maturity to actually separate herself from her mother. 

Miller said Daughter struggles to assume an identity as she is caught in an awkward phase between adulthood and childhood, oftentimes reverting back to a childlike stage. 

When on stage, Miller said she worries about conveying her character’s emotions improperly—sometimes observing herself meticulously to control her facial expressions and the pitch in her voice to evoke a certain emotion to the right degree. 

Miller said the Doudna Fine Arts Center Black Box, where the acts will be performed, is so small and intimate that audience members get a close glimpse of the actors’ facial expressions and gestures. 

In “Mother Love,” Grace Munoz plays the Dresser, a character who is probably attached to mother as much as Daughter. 

Whenever Daughter argues with Mother about relationships and adulthood, Dresser chimes in with some savvy comment filled with guilt to remind her of her mother’s sacrifices. 

Munoz said the character is very protective of Mother because they have gone through so much together and mentioned that she enjoyed playing a snippy character. 

“I like playing a snippy character, and it was a challenge to take on a role where I had to play an adult,” Munoz said. “I’ve been in several plays where I’ve been the child in the mother-dynamic relationship.”

She struggled to transform into an adult after becoming accustomed to playing a child, where she said flailing around on stage and overacting was custom. 

 Making sure she came off as a real adult frightened her, Munoz said. 

Last year, Munoz played a character in “Volpone” and said she thought the audition process would be similar.

Munoz said she had certain expectations about her audition that changed right as she stepped onto the stage when the directors asked her to read excerpts from two different characters—Mother and Daughter. 

Miller said she was nervous because it was her first audition for an Eastern production. 

Michelle Williams, a junior theater arts major and the actress who plays Mother, walked into the Black Box in the middle of the interview; her colleagues called her over.

Williams said, at first glance, her character reminded her of the evil stepmother from Cinderella. 

As rehearsals progressed, Williams said she eventually sympathized for Mother and discovered that her strict demeanor masks her frailty, but that she cares for her daughter in a selfish manner, almost living vicariously through her. 

At the end of the act, Daughter discovers her mother’s dark secret, a secret the actors stressed they wanted to keep under wraps until the show, though Williams and Miller shared that both protagonists fail to come to an understanding even when they both learn the truth about the other. 

Williams said the audience might identify with the power struggle between the two main characters. 

“All families, at least my family, deal with the time when a child seeks some freedom from (his or her) parents,” Williams said. 

The other act that will be featured that night is “The Stronger.” In the play, the protagonist, named Miss X, recounts an intimate night she and her husband spent together one Christmas Eve and begins to suspect that her husband may have cheated on her with an old acquaintance, Miss Y. 

Chela Gurnea, a sophomore theater arts major and the actress who plays Miss Y, has no lines and can only rely on her poses and facial expressions. 

To prepare for the role, Gurnea stood in front of a mirror for hours, read Miss X’s lines and reacted the way she thought Miss Y would react as Miss X slowly uncovered the mystery bit by bit.  

Christopher Mitchell, the director of the show, said he chose this play because it is something new and different for audiences at Eastern. He also said that it is perfect timing for this play to take the stage, as Strindberg’s 100th anniversary is drawing near. 

Tickets for Eastern students are $5, $10 for audience members 62 and older, and $12 for the general audience.

Jaime Lopez can be reached at 581-2812 or jlopez2@eiu.edu.