Thursday will be the first time five student actresses performing a collection of plays called “Daughters of Dionysus” will see their stage as it is the first day of their performance.

The performance is a part of the symposium on Ancient Greece.

The performance begins at 7 p.m. in the Booth Library Atrium, which is why the girls have not been able to rehearse there. Instead, they have been rehearsing in the Doudna Fine Arts Center.

Meghan Kegeris, a junior communication studies major, said she is nervous about the performance but is also excited as she has been working on her parts since August when members of the theater department auditioned for all of the roles for the semester.

“When the casts were posted, there was a sheet of paper with five girls’ names on it,” Kegeris said. “It didn’t have a title but said that it would be Greek theater.”

The collection is composed of scenes from three Greek plays “Medea,” “Antigone” and “The Trojan Women” with narration between the scenes so the audience understands the context and significance of the scenes chosen.

At the time Kegeris was cast, the performance did not have script.

The cast, which consists of students Amina Baker, Shelbie Kearfott, Kegeris, Stormie Kelley and Leanne Kirchner along with help from director Jean Wolski, compiled the script.

Kegeris said she has never been in a play that did not have a script and enjoys picking and choosing what fits. She has continued to adjust her script even as recently as the past week before the show.

“It’s very freeing to have this kind of control of what I perform,” Kegeris said. “I got to take a whole different approach.”

Wolski said the project began when she was approached to give a lecture as part of the symposium and instead offered a performance of scenes from Greek plays.

“Oftentimes, in theater we have a lot more male roles than female roles, and we tend to get more women than men in the major,” Wolski said. “ There are a lot of strong female roles in Greek theater.”

Although there are two male roles in the collection, the actresses who portray them wear masks. Wolski said they did not cast any males as a way to keep the amount of roles for each gender in the department even.

“It really was the overwriting factor,” Wolski said.

She said historically, the roles would have been played by men, even the women’s parts, but the gender-reversal technique she used is something that is commonly done in educational theater to create roles.

Wolski said the women have greatly grown through the process and now understand the history surrounding their characters and where they came from.

Kegeris, who is currently in a theater history class, said she likes how she is performing plays she had learned about in class.

“We talk about Greek theater in that class all the time,” Kegeris said. “I was really able to get the feel of the period.”

Amy Wywialowski can be reached at 581-2812 or alwywialowski@eiu.edu.